We All Fall Down
by Iwovepizza
Summary: Frank's world was crumbling, and quite literally. Thanks to a new virus that had decimated the human population, Frank believed that he was the only person left, and was somehow immune to the virus and its one hundred percent kill rate. Then he meets Perseus, an aloof young man of few words, and begins to realize just how much he doesn't know about what's lurking in the shadows.
1. When the World Screams

_"_ _Now I watched when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals,_

 _And I heard one of the four living creatures say with a voice like thunder,_

 _"_ _Come!" And I looked, and behold a white horse! And its rider had a bow,_

 _And a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering, and to conquer."_

 _-Revelation 6: 1-2_

-Ω-

You could say that Frank and Death had been scandalously, scandalously intimate during the past few months, and the teenaged boy would do little to argue with you. It was a bit scary how accurate that little statement was, and it didn't just apply to Frank; it applied to everyone on the western side of the world, or at least, anyone left on the western side of the world. He plodded through New York City with a bandana wrapped around his mouth and nose, his eyes squinting around the heaps and heaps of dust that still lingered in the air, and tried to ignore the sun beating down on top of him, making him sweat and causing all of the bodies to fester and emit such a putrid smell that even the crows had been scared off. Without the huge black birds' constant calling, there was just silence. Silence and the sound of Frank's footsteps on the mangled cement.

He picked his way over chunks of what had once been buildings, having to clamber through the skeletons of some of those that were still standing, and finally made it to where he needed to be. It was a place he'd pinpointed when he'd first surveyed the city, and he walked through the gaping hole in the east wall. At first, he'd been wary of ruffians and gangs that would no doubt form, but upon realizing that nobody had survived and that he was the only one, he strolled leisurely into every place he found. His stomach rumbled, but he disregarded it as he began to rifle through the aisles, which were packed and brimming with food. He saw, and smelled, for that matter, the rotting body of the cashier slumped over the counter, still in his loud, obnoxious blue vest, but ignored him as he picked his way through the dark aisles. The lights, of course, were off, and Frank had to rely on the sunlight coming from the hole in the wall in order to read the ingredients on the bags to make sure that there was nothing he was allergic to in there. Leave it to the lactose intolerant kid to survive all this.

He thanked everyone and everything that in this day and age everything had preservatives in them, and he heaped as many things into his bag as possible, steering well clear from the rancid smell coming from the dairy aisle. He completely and totally ransacked the mini-mart's aisle that was titled "Essentials", because one only began to truly appreciate these essentials when they were gone. He finally managed to salvage a couple of toothbrushes and several tubes of toothpaste, as well as an overflowing amount of deodorant (which wasn't really needed since there was no one really around to smell his terrible body odor) , and a shampoo bottle. He hated to abandon this gold mine, but he wasn't a character on Skyrim; he couldn't carry every useful thing around with him. He soon got over his worry when he realized that he could always come back later; it wasn't like there was anyone else left to raid it.

He bid the very much dead cashier farewell and slipped outside, taking a deep breath through his bandana and relishing the most-likely-toxic, post-apocalyptic air. As Frank weaved his way through the barren wreckage of what had once been a bustling city, he couldn't help but wonder why _he_ had to be the one to survive. A newspaper skidded past, the bold headline making him chuckle:

 **SCIENTISTS BELIEVE TO HAVE DISCOVERED CURE TO RAPIDLY SPREADING VIRUS**

It was dated about a year ago, and Frank knew just as well as everyone else that this "cure" would turn out to be a dud just like the rest. No cure had been able to be salvaged because people didn't live long enough to be studied for symptoms and the like; they simply died, though not before a black handprint-like shape appeared on their wrist, as if someone had grabbed them. Many people had theorized that it was a man-made sickness that was meant to be used for biological warfare, but it had broken loose from the lab and run rampant. These theorists had been too busy being dead to try and scheme about anything else, and Frank wondered if the virus had spread to any other continent. He sure hoped not.

Frank continued on, his eyes scanning his surroundings warily as they picked out movement within the shadows. Packs of feral dogs were congregating, consisting of the poor saps who'd managed to survive the building collapses, and their gazes bored into Frank, slobber dribbling from their mouths and their ribs sticking out against their pelts. They were currently eying Frank like he was an all-you-can-eat buffet, and he began to jog, hoping to make it back to his camp before nightfall. He didn't know what would happen if he found himself out in the open during the nighttime, but he didn't want to find out; the feral dogs were wary in broad daylight, but they certainly wouldn't hesitate to pounce in the cover of darkness.

Though the landscape seemed random and unfamiliar, Frank navigated easily, and pretty soon he was standing in front of the Old Dutch Church, staring up at the towering spires and the crack-riddled stained glass. The church wasn't old, or Dutch, for that matter, but he supposed that it was the thought that counted. Frank tromped up the cobbled path and up the stone steps, fumbling with the lock under the harsh scrutiny of stone angels, and finally pushed the huge wooden doors open with the groan of hinges in serious need of oiling. Frank stepped over the threshold and felt at home, or as at home as one could get when they were probably the only person left on Earth.

He didn't know why he'd settled in a church, since he hadn't been the least bit religious before and certainly wasn't going to turn to religion now. Perhaps it was because it was the most intact building he could find, or perhaps he was just seeking an answer to the big fat _Why?_ that hovered around him whenever he was alone with his thoughts, which was often. The church was by no means large, and Frank thought it to be quite cozy as he plopped his bag down on its respective pew, one of the handful that remained; all of the rest had been turned into either fuel for fire or into scrap wood used to patch up the many gaps in the walls and ceilings. He had yet to experience a winter under these news circumstances, but he knew he needed to cover as many holes as possible before that time rolled around and he froze to death.

"What's up, Mr. D?" Frank greeted the opossum that had made its home in the rafters of the church and occasionally pooped on Frank's things. The rodent didn't reply, naturally, its nose twitching and its beady black eyes following Frank's every movement. Frank was pretty sure he had some form of rabies, but he didn't bother Mr. D and therefore Mr. D didn't bother him, though the 'D' in his name stood for Dipshit. "I raided that mini-mart I was talking about earlier. Got some good stuff." Mr. D had long since gone back to chewing on a stick, and Frank sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

He turned his gaze to the decent-sized crucifix mounted above the altar. It could also serve as firewood, but Frank had decided that that would be taking it too far; he could only desecrate this church so much before he began to lose some of his humanity, and he wondered if he would go to hell for this. Then again, the big man upstairs hadn't really given him much of a choice, now did he? Frank unpacked his backpack, setting everything in their respective places (even though it was the apocalypse he still felt like he needed a system of organization), and began the long process of bathing and getting to bed.

The best part about having a church as a place to set up camp was that it had a near-unlimited amount of candles and matches, as well as water for blessing and stuff. That "holy" water was Frank's bathtub, and even though it was cold, he couldn't find it in himself to complain as he scrubbed all of the dirt and dust off of his body. He dried himself off with a towel he'd snagged from a public pool and slipped on the clothes he'd been wearing every day for the past few months; sadly, he hadn't been able to find and raid a clothing store yet, and he was pretty sure his plaid shirt, his torn, faded jeans, and his boxers smelled awful, though he'd long since gone noseblind to the stench.

He sighed and shuffled back to his things, running a hand through his damp hair and eying the pew that his sleeping bag was rolled out onto, his back already beginning to ache at the prospect of sleeping on it again. The colors on the beautiful stained glass windows were beginning to grow dimmer, the depictions of the sacred mysteries becoming nearly unrecognizable as the morning light faded, and Frank lit a candle to see by. He reclined back on the pew, which was packed full of blankets and other soft things that could serve as pillows, and looked up at the dim outline of the rafters, where Mr. D was beginning to move around a bit more.

Frank turned and took one of his most treasured things in hand, the one thing he'd been able to salvage from the remains of his house, and forced back tears as he stared down at it. The button eyes of a stuffed bear stared back. He was a childhood memento, a little thing that Frank had kept on his bed because it brought back memories of when he was a kid. Now it was the only thing he had left; he hadn't even found any of his grandmother's things to keep or bury in her memory. They'd simply been buried too far under the rubble, along with Grandma Zhang herself, and Frank tried not to wonder if his grandmother had actually been alive when he'd sprinted home from school and found the house decimated. Tried not to wonder if she'd been calling softly to him as he desperately sifted through the rubble. Tried not to wonder if she'd cried when she'd heard his retreating footsteps and the sound of the city crumbling in the distance.

He rubbed desperately at his eyes and hugged the stuffed bear to his chest. "Do you ever miss your family, Bear?" Frank asked, rolling his eyes at the name he'd given it, considering he'd long since forgotten the name he'd bestowed upon it when he was two. "I certainly do." Frank choked on a laugh, his words turning bitter. "I mean, you probably wonder if you're the last teddy bear on Earth, and your only company is someone or something you can't understand or talk to. You probably think that you're going to be alone forever. You probably think that you should just take that coil of rope in your backpack and swing by your neck to just get it over with." Tears streaked down Frank's cheeks as he slowly lowered himself onto his side and pulled the blankets up over his shoulders, though not before he extinguished the candle. For a while he just stared into the dark, clutching Bear like a lifeline, and then he finally managed to fall into a fitful sleep that was plagued by images of his grandmother being buried alive.

-Ω-

Today would be the day that Frank found Him. The day was blisteringly hot, and Frank had shed his shirt so he didn't soak through it with sweat and make it smell even worse than it already did. His footsteps echoed throughout the wasteland that had once been New York City, each one splitting through the silence like a gunshot, and Frank would be lying if he claimed that it didn't unnerve him. He tried to ignore that, though, and hefted his backpack higher over his shoulder as he set off back to the mini-mart. Squinting at the crude directions he'd scribbled on his hand, in the other hand he twirled a baseball bat with nails and other sharp things protruding from it, in case he encountered any dogs or perhaps some animals who'd escaped from Central Park Zoo.

Frank had gone this way many times since everything had gone to shit, and every time it hadn't been any more different than before. The buildings that were still standing leaned at worrisome angles, and the rest had been reduced to scraps and rubble. It was the biggest graveyard Frank had ever seen, and he pulled his bandana over his nose again as the smell of festering flesh made bile rise up in his throat. This air wasn't good to breathe to begin with, what with all the dust particles in the air, but the city had been the only place where Frank had even a smidgeon of a chance to survive, since there were so many stores to raid.

He had no idea what had made everything just deteriorate like this; the biggest issue before everything had started was the sickness. And the worst part was that it couldn't be singled out as just structural failure; almost all of the buildings in New York City and the surrounding suburbs had experienced this "structural failure", too many of them for it to be considered a coincidence. Frank couldn't afford to think about that now as he wove through the many vehicles that were clustered on the street, some of which had drivers slumped over the wheel, all of them boasting black handprints on their arms. Most of the cars were simply empty. With all of this exposure to the deceased victims of the virus, Frank wondered how on Earth he hadn't gotten infected yet. Whatever this immunity was, it sure as hell wasn't a blessing.

Frank was so consumed with his thoughts that he nearly missed the movement out of the corner of his eye. He stopped dead, immediately on high alert as his gaze zeroed in on that flicker of movement in the corner of his vision. He didn't hear the telltale cackle of the crows, so he could only assume the worst as he strained his hears to pick up some sort of hint on what he could be up against. Eventually growing to suspect dogs, he raised his baseball bat high in the air, white-knuckling his grip as he slowly turned around…to see a teenaged boy.

In that moment, for the first time since the apocalypse had begun, Frank well and truly felt like he was in a horror movie, and he swallowed hard and backed up a few paces as his eyes trained on the young man standing in front of the hospital to Frank's right, watching him with a sort of detached surprise. Frank was pretty sure that the guy hadn't been there two seconds earlier, and the skin on his arms and the back of his neck began to prickle, the temperature suddenly plummeting to the point where it was almost chilly. Almost. The boy couldn't've been more than Frank's age, maybe a little younger, but that made him no less unnerving, considering how he'd no doubt come from the abandoned hospital behind him. Frank hadn't heard the door opening, though, and just assumed he'd been too preoccupied to notice.

"Hello?" Frank called out softly, and even though his voice was quiet it still echoed through the abandoned streets, its volume magnified to the point where he might as well have been shouting. The boy didn't reply, studying Frank with sunken green eyes, and the survivor was sufficiently freaked out at that point. He checked the sign on the hospital to make sure it wasn't a mental hospital, and felt slightly reassured when the faded letters above the door declared that it was a hospital for sick patients rather than a loony bin, though he was still on high alert in case this guy was still contagious. He tried again, "Hello?"

The teenager once again didn't respond, his thin, pale fingers clutching the IV pole he had with him. Frank wished he could muster up the courage to go over, to ask what was wrong, but fear froze him in place, leaving him locked in a stare down with this mystery teen. Frank then realized that this boy was clearly unarmed, unless he'd somehow managed to conceal a weapon in the skimpy hospital gown he wore, and he hefted his baseball bat over his shoulder, trying to seem macho as he strolled over to where the guy was standing on the ramp of the hospital.

"Are you alright?" Frank asked, and finally received his answer; a head shake. "What's the matter?" The boy just stared at him balefully, his eyes looking like shards from the windows of the Old Dutch Church, and Frank shouldn't've expected the cooperation to last. Frank sighed heavily as he plopped his ass down next to the teenager, his irritation simmering beneath the surface, though he almost immediately regretted sitting down when he realized that he could see right up the dude's hospital gown. He didn't want to see what surprise he'd get when this guy turned around. Still, frank had just found perhaps one of the last people alive, and he sure as hell wasn't going to give him up so easily.

The boy eventually lowered himself onto the ground next to Frank, and the survivor noticed just how badly his bare feet were cut up. He must've walked on broken glass or something. Frank didn't like to be nosy, but he really had no choice with this teen, who was unwilling to work with him.

"Can I see your bracelet?" he asked, and the patient nodded extending the wrist that had the hospital band around it. Frank was surprised to find that the only think printed on his bracelet was a first name: Perseus. No surname. No date of birth. No date of admission into the hospital. He was simply "Perseus". Perseus watched Frank tamely as he looked all over the bracelet, even going as far to take it off and turn it around, and yet there was no more information on this guy. He was even more of a mystery than he had been before. Frank finally gave up and reattached the bracelet, in case Perseus would be offended if he just tossed it to the side, and sat back, looking the black-haired boy up and down.

Finally, after a long period of silence, Frank extended his hand, trying for a winning smile. "It's nice to meet you, Perseus," he told the patient. "I'm Frank." Perseus gave Frank a wary once-over before gingerly taking his hand and shaking it. The teen's hand felt like glass in Frank's, his skin somehow cold in the blistering weather, and he tried not to show how eager he was to release it. "How long have you been in that hospital?" he asked, even though he knew that the attempt would be fruitless, and was rewarded for his efforts by a scrutinizing stare.

"Well, before we're on our way I want to know if you have any, I don't know, sicknesses that may or may not affect me." Frank told him, gesturing to the IV pole and the hospital gown. "I'm not gonna leave you I just want to know what I'm dealing with."

Percy gave Frank another long look before he extended the arm with the IV needle in it. There was a black handprint on his wrist. Frank's mouth went dry.

"I'm in way over my head," he murmured.

-Ω-

 **(A/N) Hello, everyone. I'm Iwovepizza and I'm proud to present to you the first chapter of We All Fall Down. Please don't forget to follow/favorite and leave a comment so I know how I can improve! This is also available on AO3**


	2. My Prayers are Schizophrenic

_"_ _And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly, I perceived that this is also vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth in knowledge increaseth in sorrow."_

 _-Ecclesiastes 1: 17-18_

-Ω-

"Holy fuck, you're a medical miracle!" Frank gushed as he and Perseus slowly picked their way through the ruins of the city. "You've somehow survived for all of this time!" Perseus didn't respond, per the norm, and instead concentrated on hobbling around the cars that were crammed in the street; this particular block's sidewalks were smothered by rubble, and it was easier to navigate through the maze of automobiles than to fumble for handholds on the debris. The patient didn't even give the bodies slouched in the seats a second glance, and Frank was perplexed before he realized that Perseus had been in a hospital when everything had gone to shit. He'd probably seen his fair share of corpses; if the sickness or the wreckage hadn't killed the other patients, the lack of medical personnel should've done the trick.

The crows had arrived once more, shrilling and cackling as they swooped down to peck at the windows of the cars, smelling food, and Frank felt nauseated as he and Perseus skirted around the handprint-bearing carcass of a man. The dogs had gotten to him, and now his stomach had been ripped wide, the organs that hadn't been devoured spilling out onto the pavement. The birds and flies would start swarming soon. Just in case Frank didn't have any immunity and was just horribly unlucky to survive, he covered his nose and mouth with his bandana as if it would somehow compensate for his extreme exposure to the sickness.

"C'mon, talk to me," Frank complained as he clambered onto the hood of a Prius that had T-boned another car. Tucking the IV pole under his arm, he extended his hand and hauled Perseus up beside him, also helping lower him down, too. The bareness of his feet made Frank cringe slightly whenever the soles touched the (most likely scorching hot) blacktop. "Please, Perseus. My only company has been a teddy bear and an opossum. Stuffed animals and rodents don't make for good conversation."

"Opossums are marsupials," Perseus replied nonchalantly, as if he hadn't been completely silent beforehand. His voice was hoarse from disuse, though, and it sounded as if he gargled gravel in his spare time. "And just Percy is fine."

"He speaks!" Frank whooped, and Percy flinched a little as Frank's voice echoed throughout the city. Realizing this, Frank added in a lower voice, "Sorry."

"It's fine. I just haven't been out of that hospital in a while. It was so quiet in there," Percy mumbled, his fingers tapping on the metal of the IV pole. They lapsed into silence after that, and Frank had so many questions, though he didn't really want to hound the poor guy so soon after he was liberated from the hospital. Frank wondered how Percy could be startled by his yelling and not the ungodly squeaking and squealing of the wheels of his IV pole.

The survivor didn't want to make Percy feel uncomfortable, but he couldn't deny that he was infatuated by the fact that the patient had somehow managed to survive the illness and was still walking and talking, though he did look incredibly weak. "So…when did you realize you were different than everyone else with the sickness?"

"You mean MRSK-1?" Percy inquired, his brows knitting. "They sometimes called it Beelzebub's Print, too. Well, I knew I was different from the start."

"I can relate," Frank snorted, tapping the handle of his baseball bat from where it was slung through a loop in his belt.

"No, you can't," Percy replied shortly, "Do you know what it's like to be strapped to a table and poked and prodded with needles by people in gas masks 24/7? No? Then I'm pretty sure you can't fucking relate." Frank immediately backed off, and he noted how Percy's shoulders were tense, the hand that wasn't holding the IV pole balled into a fist at his side. Frank was surprised when the patient continued, "I was only allowed to walk around at night, and in the morning they put roofies in my breakfast and would drag me off to the testing room. I'm pretty sure the government was involved to keep the staff hush-hush, because if my mom found out…" He stopped and laughed. And then he began to cry.

Percy's knees wobbled as he tried to smother his sobs with his hand, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes, and he clutched his IV pole, leaning on it to keep himself upright. Frank sighed and, in the most stupid, life-risking moment of his life, swept Percy off of his feet and into his arms. He carried the patient bridal-style for the rest of the trip, trying to ignore the black handprint on his wrist that was dangerously close to Frank's face. He seriously hoped that Percy wasn't contagious, because if that was the case he was fucked.

-Ω-

Dusk was approaching when Frank finally reached the Old Dutch Church, his arms surprisingly fine for having to carry a teenaged boy for about a mile or so. Then again, Percy was light to the point where it was concerning. The patient had passed out sometime during the trip, his thin, glasslike hands clutching Frank's bare shoulders, and Frank felt pity beyond what he'd ever experienced before as he shouldered the doors open and slipped inside.

Mr. D greeted him with a particularly fierce chitter, and Frank promptly ignored the marsupial as he staggered the last few steps towards the pews and dumped Percy down on the nearest one. The patient stirred only slightly, his eyelids twitching, and now that he was close, Franks saw how his lips were cracked and peeling and his eyes were slightly sunken into his head. He'd barely been surviving.

Frank's desperation for human contact had made him blind when it came to considering just how foolish it would be to take in someone, especially an invalid. Before the raid on the mini-mart, food had been dwindling to dangerously low levels. Percy was in no shape to go around foraging, and Frank couldn't possibly manage to scrounge up enough food to feed the both of them. On top of that, Frank would have to ask what medicine Percy needed when he woke up, possibly having to make many trips to and from the hospital. He'd also have to go on a serious search for clothes; New York City became frigid in the winter, and with just that thin cotton hospital gown, it wouldn't matter if Percy had survived Beelzebub's Print- he could still die from hypothermia, especially in a drafty, crumbling church.

Frank draped a blanket over Percy, hoping to God that everything would work out and he wouldn't have to watch the patient slowly wither away. Wiping his sweat-beaded face, Frank took to the baths and scrubbed all of the dirt off of himself, glad for the extra rainwater he'd been collecting. He didn't have any pajamas, but he sure as hell wasn't sleeping in jeans, so he stripped down to his boxers and padded into the main chapel once more. By then, Percy was sitting up and staring around with wide and curious eyes, his fingers idly fumbling with the blanket.

"You live here?" he asked gazing around at the stained glass depictions of the Sacred Mysteries.

"Me and Mr. D up there," Frank gestured to the opossum in question. "It's not much, but it's home."

"It's very nice," Percy remarked, still enchanted by the windows, "Much nicer than the hospital. You can only go so long seeing stark white walls until it starts seeming less sanitized and clean and more like a mental asylum."

"I'm sorry for not finding you sooner," Frank responded, taking a seat right next to Percy. "You think we're the only people left alive?"

"I highly doubt that," Percy murmured. "We survived, didn't we? Out of seven billion people, you think a few would be like us. There are also seven continents, and the sickness might've not spread."

"We might not have to worry about that. You think Washington D.C. is still functioning? Or is it the whole east coast?" Frank asked, and when Percy only shrugged, he continued, "Maybe we could bring you there. You're a medical anomaly, and maybe they can extract whatever antibodies you've built up to defend from the disease to use as a vaccine for others. You could save millions of lives!"

"If there are lives left to save," Percy answered, and a furrow had appeared in his brow, "But if you're suggesting that I hand myself over to another set of doctors who'll experiment and jab needles in my arm every five seconds, then count me out." Frank's face fell. "I'm not going through that again."

"I understand," Frank agreed, "But I'll make sure that doesn't happen."

"How can you be so sure?" Percy inquired, taking incredible interest in his fingers, which he laced together in his lap. "I'm valuable. Perhaps an asset to the survival of the human race. Who knows what they'll do to me?"

"I'm not saying I agree with their methods, but wouldn't it be worth it to save people?" Frank probed. "I mean, it's not like it would all be in vain."

"But what if it is?" Percy snapped, his eyes suddenly blazing. Frank recoiled at his stony expression. "What if I'm only used as some sort of guinea pig to save a handful of people? How do I know if there are even people still left in the world, enough to save that it's worth it to go through hell? Even if we find the cure, how are we going to find all of the scattered survivors? It's not like there'll be entire cities that managed to be saved."

"But how do you know that? You seemed hopeful before. What happened in a span of three minutes?" Frank prompted. Percy didn't reply, but Frank saw the patient shivering despite the comfortable temperature. He didn't want to grill him, so he remained silent.

-Ω-

"I wrote down all of my medication and my clothing sizes," Percy stated, handing Frank a folded slip of paper when the survivor had assembled all of the supplies he could need for his foray. "The sizes aren't up to date, though, but it doesn't matter if they're loose."

"Thank you," Frank replied, scanning the paper and finding names of medications that he couldn't pronounce, though Percy had provided helpful descriptions of what the bottles should look like. Percy also needed bandages, considering the patient was planning on taking out his IV, which he was pretty sure he didn't need anymore. Frank wasn't a medical expert so he hadn't argued. "What will you be doing while I'm gone?"

"I can make this place a little more presentable and homey," the patient replied. "This is a permanent base camp, right? You don't move around?"

"Yeah," Frank confirmed, "But if I have to start venturing farther and farther to get food, then we'll have to move to a place that's closer to where the food supplies are."

"I also think I should go out on a little foraging trip myself," at Frank's aghast expression, he chuckled. "Don't worry, I won't go far. I want to see if I can salvage some furniture or maybe even a carpet."

"But how will you move it?"

"Don't underestimate me."

Frank only shrugged and, hefting his baseball bat and his several tote bags that would hopefully be filled with meds, food, and clothes, whisked out of the church. If the heat was unbearable yesterday, it certainly was today, and Frank hadn't even bothered to bring a shirt with him. Sweat dribbled down his face and in between his shoulder blades, and he quickly had to tie his bandana around his nose and mouth as the rank of bodies permeated the air. The sun hung high in the sky, watching with what seemed to be amusement as it scorched the Earth, simply standing by as it watched the world it had loved and nurtured turn into a barren wasteland.

Crows had long since recognized and committed Frank's face to memory, and they knew that following him meant leading to food, whether he felled a stray dog or dug up granola bars from abandoned stores. They called to him, circling above his head and occasionally landing on jagged bits of rubble before taking off after him again. Frank had been down this route a lot more often in the past few days, and had committed most, if not all, of its twists and turns to memory. He passed the hospital, deciding to raid the mini-mart again first and then swing back around to collect the meds, and couldn't help but compare it to a grave; it loomed overhead, a dark and gloomy mausoleum probably brimming with corpses, and its frame sagging. Its chipped and gaping windows seemed to follow his movement as he walked past, and he picked up the pace a little, anything to get away from it.

He searched high and low for clothing, actually searching instead of skimming a bit, and found heaven in the form of one of those cheap, sleazy souvenir shops that sell the snow globes next to the bongs. He raided it intensely, grabbing several 'I NY' hoodies, T-shirts, underwear, and sweaters, tote bags, and hats, as well as cheapy plastic flashlights, pencils, and flip-flops, which would be for Percy until Frank could find him some actual shoes. After the place was practically desecrated and half of Frank's bags were brimming with tourist shit, he took off to the mini-mart. The rats had found the cashier and now only a few bits of ragged flesh clung to his nearly picked-clean skeleton. Frank grabbed as many things as he could, from chips to nature bars to water bottles to essentials, and almost staggered under the weight of the bags he was holding.

To his concern, the mini-mart offered no more supplies, with Frank having salvaged everything, and therefore the survivor would have to scope out another source of food tomorrow. This wouldn't've been an issue had he not had another mouth to feed, but Frank tried not to think about that; once Percy removed his IV and got his strength back up, he would be perfectly capable of moving around and joining Frank on foraging trips. Much to Frank's dread, it was now time to go to the hospital, and he adjusted his bandana and mentally prepared himself for the stench as he neared it.

The red letters of the sign were faded, proclaiming to all that it was called Hope Hospital and Medical Center. Frank gulped a bit as he scaled the steps and hovered by the double doors, which were slightly ajar and revealing nothing but darkness ahead. He felt uneasy leaving the clothing outside but had to in order to be able to more easily rifle through the shelves of medicine. He kept the food bags with him, though, lest the flock of crows following him got to it. With a deep breath and a flashlight from the souvenir shop clutched in a death grip, he stepped inside.

The rancid smell immediately engulfed him, and Frank almost doubled over and retched as the stench of rotting flesh filled his nose, amplified ten times than when he was out in the open. He saw patients slumped over in wheelchairs and the bodies of nurses sprawled on the ground, all of them bearing a black handprint on their wrist. Frank gagged as he stepped over a woman with maggots wriggling around in her forehead, and the drone of flies was almost deafening. They didn't bother Frank, though, as the survivor produced the list from his pocket and followed the incredibly convenient signs labeled "medical storage". The names of the medicines were unnecessarily long, but he really couldn't be bothered by that as he stepped over bodies that he could barely see in the dark. His only light came from his flashlight, which cut through the blackness like a laser beam, and the windows, which cast squares of sunlight onto the floor and the bodies that littered it.

"Why are hospitals always so creepy?" Frank muttered to himself as he followed the directions that the cheerfully colored, though at times bloodstained, signs were giving him. Luckily he hadn't encountered any child corpses yet, which he'd tried to avoid doing ever since everything had gone to shit, though he had, unfortunately, seen shadows of children's bodies in the backseats of cars. Finally, he stood before the double doors that led into the hospital's medicinal supply, which it was clearly labeled. He had to kick it open, after trying it and finding it locked, and was shocked at the sheer amount of medicine that he was faced with. Even though he could really only see the outlines of the shelves in the dark, the masses of it almost gave him vertigo. Lucky for him, they were organized alphabetically, and his gaze kept flicking to the sheet of paper and back to the many neat rows of boxes, vials, and bottles.

After checking all of them letter for letter and matching the bottle shape, Frank managed to get all of the medicine bottles correct. From the sound made when he shook them, there were pills in them, and he quickly stuffed them into a tote that clearly stated that New York was the best place to be. Needless to say, Frank was just about ready to high-tail the fuck out of there as he shouldered his way through the doors with his bags brimming. He was just about to turn to duck down the hall and make the painstaking journey back to the lobby when suddenly something caught his attention out of the corner of his eye.

Frank turned and his mouth dropped open.

A sallow-faced corpse of a young woman was propped up against the wall, her eyes in the process of rotting right out of their sockets as they stared straight ahead, right at Frank. A cross glittered at her breast, shining like a golden beacon against her bloodstained nurse's scrubs. A machete lay next to her hand, obviously having been dropped during the decay process, and on the opposite side was a severed hand. Frank felt like he was going to vomit as he looked at the wall behind her. Written in the blood from the woman's mangled stump was a message:

 **THE HORSEMEN WALK AMONG US**

Needless to say, Frank didn't stay for long.


	3. We Wear Red So They Don't See Us Bleed

_"_ _Have you the horse's strength? Have you clothed his neck with thunder?_

 _Can you frighten him like a locust?_

 _His majestic snorting strikes terror. He paws the valley, and rejoices in his strength;_

 _He gallops into the clash of arms. He mocks at fear, and is not frightened;_

 _Nor does he turn his back from the sword. The quiver rattles against him;_

 _The glittering spear and javelin. He devours the distance with fierceness and rage;_

 _Nor does he come to a halt when the trumpet has sounded._

 _-Job 39:19-24_

-Ω-

When Frank came back, he saw a horse- a literal fucking horse- eating the hydrangeas in the church's front garden.

What. The. Everloving. Fuck.

The survivor stood there gaping, his arms screaming from the weight of the bags in his arms, and watched as Percy sat cross-legged in the grass next to it, feeding it chutes and stroking its neck. He'd even went through the hassle of bringing his IV pole out with him, and he stroked the horse's nose, murmuring to it as if they were old friends.

Now, the message about "the Horsemen" was still repeating on a loop in the back of Frank's mind, so, naturally, he suspected that this wasn't as much of a coincidence as it ought to be.

"I got your stuff!" he called out, louder than was necessary in slight hopes that it would scare the horse away. He had nothing against horses, it was just that the message from the hospital was seriously freaking him out, not to mention that the horse looked like it had been through hell and back. "It's all right here!"

"Great!" Percy replied, grinning lopsidedly and raising a hand in greeting, and motioned for Frank to come over. "Come look!"

"I see." Frank found himself using the voice that he would normally use when babysitting one of his younger cousins; it was that"wow-that's-not-interesting-it's-actually-a-little-disgusting-but-I'm-going-to-act-proud-of-you-because-you're-still-a-little-kid" kind of tone. The horse's ears rotated, and it raised its head to look towards Frank, who was shocked to find himself leveled with a milky-white gaze. "Is it blind?"

"Yes, _he_ is," Percy replied, patting the ground beside him insistently. "Come over and I'll introduce you two." The horse shook itself a bit, most likely to dislodge the disturbing amount of flies buzzing around it, and clumps of hair fell to the ground. Mange. Frank really, really didn't want to go near it, so he made up the first excuse that came to mind:

"Let me just put this stuff down and then I'll let you introduce me to…"

"Blackjack," Percy responded, sounding more joyful than he should; the horse was, quite literally, foaming at the mouth, and the froth was stained green from the chutes it was eating. Frank's brow furrowed a bit.

"Blackjack?" he wondered aloud. "But he's white."

"That's racist," Percy chided, though there was no real heat behind it. "But he used to be black, I can tell." Frank had no idea what the patient was talking about, so he just blamed the green-eyed boy's odd fondness towards the horse on the fact that he hadn't had his meds in a while. He gave Percy a tight smile and skirted around the horse, giving it as wide of a berth as he dared, and quickly darted into the church.

He was surprised to find that his new comrade had actually taken up on his promise to tidy up the place; all of the overturned pews were set upright and pushed off to the side, and the papers, wrappers, wood scraps, and nails that had littered the floor had been swept away and discarded. Frank looked up to greet Mr. D but found the marsupial gone, though he had no idea how Percy possibly could've managed to shoo the darned thing away; Frank had tried it many times but to no avail, and it probably meant that Percy had actually used a ladder and had crawled up to the rafters to forcibly remove the opossum, since Mr. D probably wouldn't leave under any other circumstances.

He decided that he'd organize the shitload of supplies later, instead opting to get back outside so that A) Percy wouldn't become impatient and B) He could save Percy if the horse got irritated and tried to bite his face off. Frank strode out of the church half-expecting the horse to be munching away on Percy's corpse, though it didn't look thin enough to have the desperateness to resort to carnivorous ways.

"So…Blackjack," he began as he walked over to Percy, standing dangerously close to the sickly equine.

"Yep," Percy responded, patting the horse's cheek. "I found him when trying to look for furniture. He must've wandered all the way from Central Park."

"I think he might be slightly….unwell." Understatement of the year award.

"No shit," Percy scoffed, and at least he was right enough in the head to admit to the horse's ailments. What made Frank question the patient's sanity was the fact that, even after acknowledging the fact that the horse was ill, he kept petting it. "I'm surprised the dogs didn't get him."

"Yeah, me too," Frank replied, daring to kneel next to Percy. The horse swung its head towards Frank and blinked unseeingly at him.

"Go on, introduce yourself," Percy encouraged, and Frank's pleading look was promptly ignored. Frank tensed all over as Blackjack but his head against Frank's arm, and the survivor wanted to vomit as his skin was smeared with foam- the froth from the horse's mouth _and_ the froth coming out of the horse's nose was dribbling down his bicep.

"Am I gonna get sick from this?" Frank choked, and Percy shook his head.

"Only if he bites you," he replied, "Or if you ingest the foam."

"And you trust him that much not to bite us?" Frank asked, worrying on his bottom lip as he continued to analyze the horse and its movements. It seemed like a very mellow animal, but the fact that he was brimming with sickness and disease counteracted that. He did notice, though, that Percy was right about Blackjack not being originally white; it looked like it had been another hue at one point, perhaps black or dark brown, but its hide had been bleached and was now an unsettling pale color. "And how is he still alive?"

"I don't know the answer to that second question, but I know that he'll do what I tell him," Percy replied seriously, and Frank decided not to argue, though he wasn't afraid to ask the big question:

"Is he staying with us now?"

 _Please say no. Please say no. Please say no. Please say no. Please say-_

"Of course," the patient deadpanned, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world. "I mean, he just eats plants, so it's not like we have to worry about feeding him."

"Yeah but we're in the city, where plants are noticeably more scarce than in the country," Frank pointed out.

"He'll eat anything," Percy assured, pulling up more grass, which Blackjack ate from his palm. "The leaves on trees, the grass in the cracks of the sidewalk, you name it."

"No wonder he's so fucking sick," Frank muttered under his breath, and Percy shot him a dark look,

"I know you're not a big fan, but he can be really useful," the patient insisted, lifting his chin as his green eyes sparkled with defiance. Frank gave Blackjack another look and was met with the lovely sight of the crust in the horse's tear ducts being hounded by flies that clumped together and buzzed madly. Frank was also pretty fucking sure there were mosses and fungi growing on the horse.

"How the hell can a mangy, blind, rabies-ridden horse be useful to us?" he demanded, his brows knitting.

"He can put all of our stuff on his back," Percy stated, preening a bit at his brilliant answer. "So we don't have to carry all the shit that we raid from stores."

"I'm pretty sure his back will break if we put anything on him."

"Not true!" Percy snapped, bolting to his feet, and Frank almost got a peep up his hospital gown, which he really needed the patient to change out of. Percy didn't seem body shy at all, though, and Frank wondered if he would be able to convince him that clothes were the better option. "I bet I can get on his back right now and he'll go wherever I tell him to!"

"Let's not find out the answer to that." Frank put a hand on Percy's arm before he could hoist himself up on Blackjack's back. "You wouldn't want to get mange on your junk, would you? Put some pants on first."

"Fine."

-Ω-

"Why does my underwear say 'I heart NY' across the ass?" Percy complained from the inside the confessional. The priest that presided over the church, whose corpse Frank had buried in the backyard, was probably turning in his grave as Percy stripped down to his birthday suit in the very place where people were supposed to be relieved of their sins. That was a sin in itself.

"Shut up, it's the only thing I could find," Frank growled. "Would you rather go commando?"

"In jeans? Where my dick can get caught in the zipper? Pass."

Frank looked over to see crucifix Jesus staring at him with a pained expression that could be because A) he was nailed to a cross or B) the last of his father's creations were both fucking morons. It was probably a bit of both. When Frank turned back, Percy was stepping out of the confessional decked in NYC memorabilia, all of which hung loosely off of his frame. They'd removed the IV earlier and bandaged his arm, and with his thinness covered by clothes, he could pass for a normal kid who just really, really liked the city he lived in.

"Does this mean I can go ride Blackjack now?" Percy asked, buzzing with energy.

"Bareback and bridle-less? With _flip-flops_?" Frank huffed, folding his arms over his chest. He, too, had changed, and it felt absolutely rejuvenating to not be wearing the same clothes as he'd been wearing for the last few months. They, along with Percy's hospital gown, had been burned. Using the fire from the clothes, the two of them had snapped the IV pole in the middle and turned the two halves into poles to hold up the tents they will eventually have to make. There was only so much time before resources around the Old Dutch Church were exhausted and they'd have to move. Frank was thinking about going to Central Park, where Blackjack would have enough grazing room and they could use the surrounding trees for shade. They'd have to move again to a more sheltered area once winter rolled around, but it would be nice while it lasted.

"Yep," Percy deadpanned and marched out. Frank prayed that Blackjack had wandered off, but that, sadly, wasn't the case. There the pale horse was, still munching away at the hydrangeas. "He's not going to hurt me."

"I beg to differ."

With a scoff, Percy shuffled over to Blackjack, who raised his head and turned his sightless gaze towards the sound of the ex-patients footsteps. Surprisingly, the horse whickered a jovial greeting, and Percy grinned and patted his neck.

"I'm going to get on your back, buddy. You ready?" Percy asked the animal, and the horse let out a low rumble that could be interpreted as "yes" or "I will fucking kill you you fucking fuck if you try to fucking get on my fucking back". Frank being the way he was, he was leaning towards the latter. "Great!"

"Do you even know _how_ to ride a horse?" Frank inquired, chewing on his lip, and Percy nodded.

"My mom used to take me riding in Montauk." His grin faded, replaced by a trembling, tight-lipped grimace. He didn't offer any explanations, but Frank could sympathize; even though he hadn't lost his mom to the sickness- she'd died in Afghanistan- he still missed her every day. He couldn't imagine how Percy felt; the first few months Frank had gone without his mom had been the roughest, and Percy's wounds were still fresh, especially since he'd had no one to turn to. At least Frank had had his grandmother, and he felt tears prick his eyes as he remembered that she was gone, too. It was just him and Percy now.

The green-eyed boy ran his hands over Blackjack's back, and Frank cringed slightly as the ex-patient's fingers carded through the mangy, fungus-riddled hairs. Percy didn't seem to mind as he braced himself on Blackjack and, in one swift movement, draped himself over his back. Blackjack didn't even react as Percy maneuvered so that he was sitting up straight, his legs dangling down the horse's sides. It would've been graceful and cool had the horse not looked like it was going to keel over at any second, but Frank had to commend Percy for not getting bucked off.

Frank nearly chewed his fingernails off as Percy took fistfuls of Blackjack's patchy mane and gently squeezed the horse's sides. Without any resistance or complaint, Blackjack began to walk forwards. Considering his condition(s), the horse actually had a pretty decent and smote stride. Frank trailed the two of them like shadows as Percy casually walked along on his blind, too-trusting-for-his-own-good horse. Blackjack allowed himself to be guided around cars and debris, and judging from the sound his hooves made, his horseshoes were still in pretty decent shape.

"Can he go any faster?" Frank asked, coming up alongside Blackjack, though he was careful to make sure he didn't brush up against him. Percy shrugged, though his eyes were twinkling.

"Let's find out," he replied. To Blackjack, he asked, "Can we try for a trot?" The horse didn't offer a verbal response, but his ears did rotate towards the sound of Percy's voice. The ex-patient clucked his tongue, squeezing Blackjack's sides, and the horse began to march forwards, slightly hesitant to take off since he couldn't see what was in front of him. Percy was murmuring encouragements as he gently prodded Blackjack's ribcage with his heels, "I promise not to run you into a wall. Let's go, c'mon."

Finally, Blackjack broke out into a surprisingly easy trot, the sound of his hooves on the pavement echoing throughout the barren wasteland. It must've been murder on Percy's ass, but the green-eyed boy wasn't complaining as a lopsided grin broke out across his face. Frank actually had to jog to keep up with them, and he found himself smiling, too. If Blackjack could make Percy so happy, then maybe he wasn't such a bad horse after all. It didn't seem like he had a mean or distrusting bone in his body as he confidently trotted along.

"The coast is clear for a while, right? No cars or anything?" Percy asked, and Frank nodded. He'd been down this way many times before, and though an ex-hospital patient and a horse that seemed to have every single sickness possible were thrown into the mix, this time was no different. Percy turned to Blackjack once more, "Can we canter? Yes? Maybe?" He sat back and clucked some more, squeezing the horse's sides, and Blackjack was surprisingly responsive compared to the transition into the trot. In a few moments, Percy was racing down the abandoned street, his clothes rippling and his face alight with glee. Blackjack didn't seem to have any trouble with the fast pace, and he was the healthiest sick horse that Frank had ever seen. The survivor skidded to a stop and just watched in awe as Percy, still his Percyish self, and Blackjack, still ridden with all kinds of pestilence, sped away, seeming like one person.

It was almost as if they'd already known each other.

-Ω-

 **(A/N) Hey, I whipped this up in a surprisingly short amount of time and had fun looking for the quote at the beginning (If you even read the quote- then again, people who don't read the quote usually don't read the AN) If anyone was wondering, Blackjack has at least 6 sicknesses; mange, African horse sickness, rabies, blindness, Equine Influenza, and Equine Encephalomyelitis. Yet surprisingly he's not dead….**


	4. A Corpse You Keep in the Cradle

_"'Go through the city after him and strike; do not let your eye have pity and do not spare._

 _Utterly slay old men, young men, maidens, little children, and women,_

 _but do not touch any man on whom is the mark; and you shall start from My sanctuary.'_

 _So they started with the elders who were before the temple…"_

 _-Ezekiel 9:5_

-Ω-

 _"Perseus Jackson," came an unfamiliar voice. It must've been a new doctor or something coming to check on him, and Percy opened his eye a sliver, mostly because he wanted to size up the newest entity that was going to perform the next wave awful tests and experiments on him. Despite the fact that his eyelids were barely parted, the lights of the hospital still blinded him. "Perseus, you must get up."_

 _"Yeah, yeah, okay," Percy scoffed and managed to force his eyes open, which he blinked rapidly in order to adjust to the brightness. As spots danced in his vision, he sat up and turned in bed to face the newcomer, saying, "I just have a request; give me the roofies directly. I know you drug my food. Stop pretending that you're all sneaky and shit."_

 _"I beg your pardon?"_

 _Percy's eyes finally managed to adjust, and he was shocked to find that he wasn't in his lumpy cot in the hospital. Instead, he was in a lavish room adorned with silk and gold. Tapestries covered the walls, depicting what Percy could only assume were scenes from the Bible, judging from the fact that they all depicted Jesus in some way, shape or form. Percy had gone to church every Sunday before the shit had hit the fan, but he'd never really believed much in what the priest was sermonizing. The person before him, who most certainly_ wasn't _a doctor, made him rethink his opinion._

 _"Who are you?" he demanded, leaping to his feet. The older man before him looked like a fifty something was trying to cosplay the Jesus in the tapestries, which wasn't uncommon in New York City, but the thing that distinguished him from your average run-of-the-mill NYC Jesus was the fact that he had glowing blue eyes and a pinstripe blue suit. It made Percy feel incredibly underdressed, what with the fact that he was still in his hospital gown._

 _"My name is Zeus," the cosplay Jesus replied._

 _"Zeus as in_ the _Zeus? Zeus with the lightning bolts?" Perseus inquired, trying to sound skeptical, but he had to admit that his curiosity was peaking._

 _"Indeed, but I am also many other things," Zeus stated, and suddenly Percy was standing in front of a one-eyed, buff, armor-clad man. "I am also Odin." His form changed again to become a ripped shirtless dude with a falcon head. "And Ra." His form changed again to become a nondescript mist. "And Brahman." Hid form changed again to reveal the long-bearded dude always depicted watching over Saints. "And God." His form returned to normal, looking just as much of a Jesus cosplayer as ever, though the suit was really starting to get on Percy's nerves; it was ruining the whole effect._

 _"If you're all of the gods from all of the religions, then whose name do you use?" Percy asked instead of, like, bowing, which he later recalled wasn't the best idea._

 _"That doesn't matter," Zeus/Odin/Ra/Brahman/God replied, seeming slightly miffed at Percy's lack of respect but still willing to cooperate with the patient. "What matters right now, is you."_

 _"Me?" Percy asked, feeling his heart skip a few beats. This is all a dream, he told himself. Just a weird, super-realistic dream. Only, when he pinched himself he didn't wake up- he felt the pain as he would in the regular world. "Where am I?"_

 _"You are many places," Zeus told him cryptically, and when the god(s?) didn't offer more of an explanation, Percy swallowed around the lump in his throat. "But you just died at 5:48 p.m. EST in your hospital cot." Percy felt as if a carpet had been ripped out from underneath him, and he proceeded to turn and chuck his guts all over the floor, though he was shocked when the remains of the day's meals disappeared as soon as they touched the ground. He felt so dizzy that he had to sit back on the bed, clutching his hair and trying to keep himself from hyperventilating._

 _"So I'm dead?" he whispered harshly. "All that experimenting was for nothing? I was just someone who survived for a week longer than normal?"_

 _"You're far from that, Perseus," the celestial entity responded. "I'm going to bring you back. I would've contacted you sooner, but I've been very much encumbered with preparations."_

 _"Preparations? For what?"_

 _"Armageddon." Percy thought he'd might pass out, and Zeus continued, "When you wake up, things will be exactly like they were. We are speaking in the span of several milliseconds as of this moment, and I'll have to release you from this before your body begins to completely shut down as the virus overtakes it."_

 _"So you're giving me immunity? To the virus?" Percy murmured, awed as Zeus nodded. This meant that he'd be able to live long enough to escape the hospital. He'd be able to go back to his mom._

 _"But this comes with a heavy price, Percy. I could always choose another patient if you don't wish to carry out the tasks I am about to give to you. If you decide that you're not willing to participate, you'll have to stay here," Zeus warned, and Percy had been too busy plotting his getaway and fantasizing about his return to his mom that he wasn't paying much attention. He was stupid, so stupid._

 _"No, I'm good," he replied quickly. "So, what are the tasks?"_

 _"There will be three others like you, all unique in their own respect, but you will be the first…"_

-Ω-

Percy awoke to the sound of the wind screaming and rattling the boards that he and Frank had nailed over the holes in the roof. For a few minutes he just sat awake in his sleeping bag, staring up at the rafters and listening to the storm raging outside. Judging from what little he could see out of the stained glass windows, there was heavy snowfall, and he shivered from inside his sleeping bag, his breath misting the air. He sat up hesitantly, rubbing his eyes and slowly turning to Frank, who was still managing to sleep soundly despite the ugly weather. Knowing that, between Frank's bulldozer snoring and the wind outside, he would never be able to get back to sleep, Percy yawned widely and hauled himself to his feet, blinking blearily.

The Old Dutch Church had been where Frank and Percy had been staying for the past few weeks, and though it had its faults, Percy couldn't help but think of it as a home. He was glad for his socks, as well as the way his feet sunk into the carpet that they'd managed to salvage, and gazed around at their little hideaway with fondness. They'd managed to make it so much more habitable in the span of a handful of days, but with winter rolling around, Percy worried that they'd starve; though they had warm clothes, they lacked sufficient snow gear and would probably freeze to death if they ventured out to find food. The dogs would start becoming more desperate and would attack, and Percy wondered how much time in New York City they had left.

He would enjoy the Old Dutch Church while it lasted, though; it was much better than when he'd been waiting around in the hospital for those difficult few months. He recalled the dream, when he'd first been given his mission, and then recalled the dream that came after that, the one instructing him to wait for a teenaged boy with a war in his head to come along and then befriend him.

 _"He's the only one that I am unable to visit."_ Zeus had said. _"He does not know of his calling, and you have to make sure to keep him company until he figures it out on his own- you must not tell him."_

He shuffled over to Blackjack, whom they'd decided to allow inside as the clouds rolled in, and nudged him in the side. The old horse was immediately up and alert, turning his head towards the ex-patient as his ears rotated this way and that.

 _"Here is your steed."_ Zeus had murmured in Percy's ears as the ex-patient had watched Blackjack approaching. _"Treat him well- he will follow you through thick and thin, and will serve you until you both are nothing more than dust in the wind."_

What Percy hadn't expected was that apparently he could communicate with his "steed", and he had to admit that he still got a little freaked out whenever Blackjack spoke to him, despite the time he'd had to adjust.

 _'Sup, boss?_ Blackjack asked, tossing his head. _These mats you brought in are super comfy._ To make a point, the horse rolled a bit on said items, seeming mighty pleased with himself. Though he and Percy had conversed about almost everything under the stars, the horse still refused to tell Percy where he'd come from.

"I keep thinking that you're talking too loud," Percy whispered to him, plopping down next to where the horse was lying. "I forget that it's just in my head."

 _WELL THEN I BETTER SPEAK MORE SOFTLY TO MAKE SURE YOU'RE NOT UNCOMFORTABLE!_ Blackjack yelled, and Percy flinched, whirling to look over at Frank, who, unsurprisingly, was still fast asleep.

"Don't do that," Percy snapped, and he swore the horse grinned cheekily at him. The ex-patient ran a hand down his face and turned to Frank, watching his chest rise and fall in tandem with his snoring. "I wonder how long it will take for him to find out. The others can't wait forever."

 _It'll happen in time, don't worry,_ Blackjack assured. _And don't fret about the others. They can be patient._

"I hope so," Percy murmured.

-Ω-

"Percy, we have to leave," Frank announced through chattering teeth, clasping his hands against his chest under the blanket. Despite the fact that he and Percy had patched up all the holes long ago, the Old Dutch Church was still drafty, enough so that his breath was clouding in the air. The ex-patient didn't reply, staring down at his fingers, which were starting to go pink. "Percy, we can't stay here. We'll both die and you know it."

There was a long pause, only the sound of Blackjack's snuffling and the wind screaming outside filling the silence.

"I understand," the green-eyed boy finally replied, turning his head to look over at their horse, whom they'd brought inside as the snowstorm raged around them. Now, snow wasn't unheard of in New York, and it wouldn't've been an issue if they'd had proper winter gear or even some hats and gloves. Sadly, they lacked both of those things, and Frank knew that it was time for them to leave and go south.

"I was thinking that we get to Florida," Frank suggested, wrapping the blanket tighter around his shoulders. "Or at least the Carolinas. Somewhere without much weather change."

"It'll take months," Percy pointed out, "And even if we're immune to Beelzebub's Print, we could be bringing traces of it to potentially populated areas."

"If the areas are so populated, why hasn't the military come by now to search for survivors?" Frank prompted, and Percy rolled his eyes so hard Frank feared they'd roll right back into his skull. "Everyone's dead and you know it."

"Beelzebub's Print is the most infectious disease in the history of anything," Percy deadpanned hobbling over to sit down next to Blackjack. "Nobody knows anything about it or what causes it. Do they really want to risk sending out people to their inevitable slaughter? NYC and Long Island are probably in complete quarantine."

"You might be right, but I just need to get out of here. I need to survive," Frank responded, rising to his feet. Suddenly, he felt a surge of anger come from nowhere, and he balled his hands into fists. "And I don't care who gets killed in the process."

-Ω-

 **(A/N) So a lot of you have been requesting a Percy POV chapter, so here it is! I really liked writing this chapter because I was able to incorporate more from the PJO/HOO universe.**


	5. The Devil Has Come to Carry Me Home

_"_ _Woe to the inhibitors of the earth and of the sea!_

 _For the Devil has come down unto you, having great wrath,_

 _Because he knoweth that he hath but a short time."_

 _-Revelation 12:12_

-Ω-

It was at this moment that New York City looked like the grave that it was; during the day, one could just assume that there'd been some form of terrorist attack and all of the people had simply been evacuated or relocated, and at night the city seemed to be asleep. But here, in this snowy hush, Frank knew that there was no one.

The pavement was blanketed with white, lumpy in places where it had covered the bodies, and Frank tried to tiptoe around them as best as he could, but he swore he stepped on an arm or a finger once or twice. The snow crunched under his boots, and if he'd been in any other situation, he would've been elated; this was great packing snow, but all he could really think about was how easily it would be to be buried under it.

Blackjack marched beside him, his bleached-white coat blending in with the surroundings, and Frank found it unnerving that he wasn't able to keep track of him out of the corner of his eye.

"I can walk," Percy insisted from Blackjack's back, picking at the ropes that kept their supply bags in place.

"No, you can't," Frank bit out through chattering teeth, rubbing his hands together as if that would somehow make his fingers capable of feeling sensation. "You don't even have shoes."

"I can handle it," the patient insisted, and Frank wondered why he was complaining; he didn't have to walk, but then again, walking was probably the only thing that was keeping Frank warm at the moment.

The sky was still clouded over, but the only bits of snow that were falling were the flakes that were swept up by the wind, which battered their faces mercilessly. It was bitterly cold, and Frank felt his nose and cheeks turning bright red as the chill nipped at them, and his three layers of I Heart NY hoodies did little to keep the cold from seeping in. His legs were even worse, what with the only barrier between his skin and the wintry air being his jeans, and he was pretty sure that his toes were going to fall off.

The only one who didn't seem the slightest bit uncomfortable was Blackjack, who they'd draped with blankets in hopes that he wouldn't freeze to death.

"It's super creepy," Percy murmured, bundling himself even further into his layers of NYC memorabilia. "To think that this city used to never sleep."

"Well it looks like it finally collapsed from exhaustion," Frank murmured, fighting against a particularly violent gust. "You have the map?" Percy nodded, removing his hands from his pockets and retrieving a worn, laminated map of Manhattan. He squinted down at it and turned to eye the nearest street sign, which was nearly invisible amidst all the falling snow.

"Right now we're on West 34th Street," he said, and the two of them simultaneously turned to see the decrepit skeleton of the Empire State Building off to their right, the antennae having broken off and chunks of the framework missing. It wouldn't be long before it fell just like the rest, and Frank picked up the pace a little as they passed right next to it, in case it decided to collapse right on top of him. "So we have to keep going until we hit the Hudson River Greenway, then we make a right and head for the Lincoln Tunnel."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa." Frank stopped in his tracks, making a 'time-out' gesture with his hands, whose fingers were starting to develop frostnip, and Percy pulled Blackjack to a halt. "The Lincoln Tunnel?"

"Yes, the Lincoln Tunnel. What other tunnel could I possibly be talking about?" Percy scoffed, making a move to start going again, but Frank grabbed his calf before he could press Blackjack forwards again.

"Percy, that's beyond dangerous. I'm not risking it," Frank snapped.

"Well how are we supposed to get off of this damn island, then?" Percy demanded, scowling. "I'm sure as hell not going all the way to Brooklyn, crossing the most likely unstable Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, trekking across Staten Island, and then crossing the Gothels Bridge just to get to the mainland."

"Would you rather get crushed by thousands of gallons of water crashing on top of you?" Frank hissed. "No, I'm not going to the Lincoln Tunnel."

"We'll be fine," Percy insisted, and before Frank could argue any further, he'd kicked Blackjack into a trot, forcing Frank to jog and catch up.

-Ω-

"It's not flooded, see? It looks like our perfect escape from the city."

"It looks like a death trap."

"What are you so worried about?" Percy inquired, dismounting from Blackjack and starting forwards in nothing but his many layers of socks, making Frank cringe with every step. "It's been holding up for all this time. Are we just that unlucky that it'll collapse right when we're in it?"

"We did survive the apocalypse, didn't we?" Frank bellowed, his anger suddenly spiking at Percy's audacity to challenge his gut instincts, and his hands balled into fists. "How much more unlucky do we need to be?" Percy raised his hands in surrender and took off once more, and I was shocked at how Blackjack was able to follow him without assistance, his ears rotating as he pinpointed Percy's exact location using nothing but hearing.

Frank let out a heavy breath, running his hands through his hair, and a part of him was contemplating taking a portion of the supplies and sending Percy and Blackjack on their merry way while he traveled back into the city to tough it out. His numb fingers and toes told a different story, though, and when Frank thought about the silence and loneliness that would ensue after the first couple of weeks, he decided that it would be worth it to take the risk. It was better to be crushed like a soda can under the pressure of the Hudson River than to slowly freeze to death while slowly going insane from lack of human contact. Frank wondered how he'd managed to get by during those first few months.

His heart jackhammering in his chest, he hesitantly made his way over to the yawning expanse of blackness that was the maw of the Lincoln Tunnel. Without the rumble of traffic, he could hear the sound of the Hudson churning if he strained his ears hard enough, and his hands began to shake as Percy rummaged through the bags on Blackjack and produced two of the many cheap flashlights they owned, as well as his pair of flip-flops, which he slipped on (with difficulty) over his sock-clad feet.

"You ready?" the green-eyed boy asked, handing Frank a flashlight, and the survivor could the ex-patient's voice echoing in the tunnel like an insistent child repeating himself:

 _You ready?_

 _You ready?_

 _You ready?_

"As I'll ever be," Frank lied, unable to keep the quiver out of his voice, and with that, they set off into the darkness beyond.

They were only three feet into the tunnel when they were forced to turn on their flashlights, and with blood roaring in his ears, Frank began to maneuver around the cars that were crammed like sardines into the many lanes of the underground road.

Frank was glad that it wasn't summer, because in that case he'd probably suffocate on the smell of rotting corpses. The cold had smothered and perhaps temporarily halted the decay process of the drivers and passengers in the cars, and Frank tried to ignore their wide, unseeing eyes that seemed to follow him wherever he moved. Blackjack was having a difficult time squeezing through the small spaces, and Frank could see the horse's ears laying back as he was undoubtedly affected by the claustrophobia, but Percy reassured him, speaking to him like he was upholding a conversation, which was kind of unnerving, since Frank only got to hear bits and pieces of it.

"Don't worry, we're almost there."

"No, I'm not lying, trust me."

"Yeah, but-"

"I understand."

Frank decided to let Percy do his weird little thing, because he was doing a great job in keeping the horse calm. Blackjack was lucky that he was blind, though, because the rats in the tunnel were running rampant. Frank felt nauseated as he saw glimpses of their tails as they scurried away, and some of the drivers of the cars had been nibbled at. Frank shivered as he saw the shady silhouette of a baby seat in the back of a minivan, and quickly averted his gaze.

Their footsteps sounded like gunshots, especially the clopping of Blackjack's hooves, and Frank's spine was wound as tightly as a bowstring, his eyes darting around as if expecting monsters to leap at him from the dark. Every new sound made him jump five feet in the air, whether it be the pitter-patter of a small leak or the scratching around of rats in their nests. At least it was warmer down here, when they were out of the wind, but that one small blessing was smothered by the fact that he knew there were millions of gallons of water above him, slowly pushing down on the roof of the tunnel and coaxing it into cracking.

They walked for a while, and Frank became more and more anxious as time progressed. Percy was still chatting away with Blackjack, and Frank was so terrified that he was afraid if he opened his mouth, a scream would come out. His flashlight lingered over one of those stupid stick figure families on the rear windshield, but he couldn't find it in himself to make fun of it as he swallowed around the lump in his throat, grimacing. The stick figure family only smiled back at him, and tears pricked his eyes as he forced himself to move on.

"I miss the movies," Percy said suddenly, his gaze still straight ahead as he spoke. Frank contemplated what to say, but the ex-patient continued, "This is all like a movie, you know? Like I Am Legend or The Day After Tomorrow."

"Except this is real," Frank murmured, grimacing as a rat corpse squished under his boot.

"Yeah," Percy whispered, the beam of his flashlight crossing with Frank's. "But I sometimes think that a director or something will yell 'cut!' and then this'll all be over."

"Don't get your hopes up," Frank replied, finally able to wiggle his toes again. "If this is a movie or a TV show or whatever, then it's not a happy one, or a hopeful one. There aren't any more people left like in the Walking Dead, and there's no saving the world like in Independence Day. It's just us, and these are the cards that we've been dealt. It's a fucking terrible hand, and Life is kicking our asses in this game, but it's all we have."

They lapsed into silence after that, and after an hour or two, they emerged in New Jersey, thus beginning their trek south.

-Ω-

 **(A/N) Thank you so much for the support on this story. I've been getting some questions on whether or not there will be pairings, and I'm going to tell you guys that I'm not really sure.** _I'm going to tell you now that the main characters in this story will be Percy, Frank, Jason, and Nico, and unless you guys want me to do a non-cannon pairing, there will most likely be no relationships._ **Also, I have to commend you guys on your theories, which are really fun to read, but I'm not going to tell you whether or not they're true.**


	6. Counting Bodies Like Sheep

_"_ _I will fill your mountains with the dead._

 _Your hills, your valleys, and your streams_

 _filled with people slaughtered by the sword._

 _I will make you desolate forever._

 _Then you will know that I am God."_

 _-Ezekiel 35_

-Ω-

It was only a matter of time before everything went to shit.

Frank and Percy traveled for forty days straight, stopping only to eat and sleep. Their only company was Blackjack and the sky, which had cleared up and was no longer belching out snow the farther they traveled from New York City. For the first day or two, Frank would turn back and see the crumbling skeletons of buildings and bridges in the distance, and he couldn't help but try and picture it for what it had been before; a bustling hub that had been the home to millions of people. It was growing harder and harder to picture that place with every day that passed. Frank would then proceed to get terrible homesickness, but then would realize that he had no home anymore; that had been obvious ever since his house had caved in and buried his grandmother under the rubble.

"How are you holding up?" Frank asked Percy as he walked alongside Blackjack. He didn't receive a reply, and began to grow nervous at the odd silence that Percy had slipped into. He wasn't even talking to Blackjack, which he usually did often, and the horse seemed to be a bit on edge as well, spooking slightly with every scuttle of a rat or snap of a twig. The sun rose higher into the sky, though the air was still brittle and chilled, and Frank's feet burned, blistering to the point where he winced whenever he took a step. He wasn't going to complain, though, or ask for a turn on Blackjack; Percy still didn't have shoes, and the worst part was that he was still morally stable enough to refuse to steal the shoes off of a corpse.

Frank let out a choked noise as he toed aside a basketball that had rolled into the street, gazing at the fallen hoop forlornly. He stared down the driveway of the house and found that the garage door was still open, still brimming with toys, and he quickly turned his gaze to the pavement, his shoulders shaking slightly. Instead of making him sad and longing for the old days, things like that now made him incredibly, unexplainably angry.

The suburbs they were traveling through offered great shelter, the complete ruination of buildings ending about a mile out of New York City, but the families that had owned those houses had died inside of them; they'd seen their first child corpse a few days ago when camping out in a two-story home with a white picket fence, and Frank had been so enraged that he'd smashed all of the windows of the house with his baseball bat.

Blackjack let out a low rumbling sound in his chest, and Percy finally seemed to jerk out of his trance, the cloudiness in his eyes disappearing as he looked down at the horse.

"I agree," he concluded, giving a tight nod. The ex-patient turned to Frank, and the survivor was trying to see if the green-eyed boy had a crazy gleam in his eyes, because he clearly had a screw loose. "Blackjack says we should take a break."

"Sounds good to me," Frank replied, shrugging, and Percy dismounted, following Frank's lead and plopping down on the brittle grass of someone's front lawn, trying to ignore the looming, empty house that stared down at them. The survivor unslung his bag from his shoulder and rifled through it, grimacing a bit.

"And what will you be choosing from our menu, Mr. Perseus?" Frank asked in a horrific caricature of a French accent. "Your options are canned food or canned food."

Their food from the mini mart had long since been eaten, and with every house that they raided, the only edible items came in cans- the most common thing being canned tomatoes and soup. Frank thought he would vomit if he tried to consume any more of those wretched things, but knew that beggars couldn't be choosers. What he wouldn't give for a ripe apple or a bowl full of grapes.

"I was actually wondering if you knew how to hunt," Percy murmured, looking down at his hands. "I don't think I can handle more tomatoes, honestly."

"I know how to hunt, but just a little. I haven't done it in a while, so I'm not very good," Frank mumbled. "Besides, last time I hunted, I had a gun. We don't have any projectiles, just my bat and the knives we've gotten from the kitchens."

"Do you know how to make traps, then?" Percy prompted, chuckling a bit as Blackjack wandered over and began nudging at Percy with his huge head.

"I know your basic ground snare," Frank admitted, rifling through his bag once more and producing a coil of string. "We're probably going to be having rat tonight, if that's okay with you."

"Better than tomatoes," Percy pointed out, and Frank really couldn't find it in himself to disagree.

-Ω-

Frank prowled through the suburbs, slinking through backyards and weaving in between driveways. The rats had all nested in the houses, he knew, but that didn't keep him from searching for entry points. He found some sticks right for the job, and clutched his coil of string like a lifeline. Occasionally, a feral cat would slink past with its prey in its jaws, completely disregarding Frank, and eventually the survivor found a hole in the grey siding of a house. It was used often, by the looks of it, what with the droppings and scuff marks around it, and Frank set to work creating his trap. His fingers fumbled and he had difficulty driving the sticks into the winter-hardened earth, but he managed to make a decent-looking snare.

He could only hope that once it was sprung, the cats didn't get to it first.

He was so used to the sound of Percy talking to Blackjack in the background, that he almost didn't realize that the voices he was hearing most certainly didn't belong to Percy. His heart leapt in his chest, and he let out a ragged breath as he rose to his feet and began making his way over to the source of the sound.

"When they said it was bad on the news, I didn't know that it would be _this_ bad," a female voice said, and oh god Frank hadn't heard a woman speak in months, maybe even a year. It was weird, though, because her words were muffled despite the fact that he was pretty sure they were close by. "Are you sure about this?"

"I don't know, Juniper. But what I do know is that we'll be in huge trouble if the sarge finds out," another voice replied, this time masculine. His voice, too, was muffled.

"You're all idiots," snapped another woman, and Frank couldn't believe it; he thought he'd been blessed when he'd met Percy. Blessed when he found just one person. Now there were three more, four if one counted the 'sarge' that the guy had been talking about.

He was so blinded by his shock and hope that he didn't even notice the twig snapping under his foot.

"What was that?" the first woman, Juniper, demanded.

"It was too large to be a rat or a cat, that's for sure," the other woman replied through clenched teeth. "Do you think someone followed us?"

"No, I made sure of it," the man replied firmly. "A survivor, maybe?"

"Don't be ridiculous, no one survived this," Juniper scoffed, and as Frank made his way over, the trio finally came into view. The survivor realized that the reason why their voices were so muffled was because they were all wearing gas masks, and it unnerved Frank to no end, not even mentioning the fact that they were dressed in military camo and were all holding assault rifles.

"Hello?" he called out meekly, wanting to announce himself first; if he snuck up on them, his chances of being shot full of lead would be ten times higher. The three soldiers whirled around, their guns trained on him, but once they seemed to notice his battered state, they immediately lowered them.

"Oh my god!" Juniper cried, "Oh my god!"

Frank found himself unable to speak, as the three of them rushed over, tearing off their gas masks in the process.

"Are you okay? What happened?" the redheaded man demanded, and Frank was able to read the name tag on his uniform: **UNDERWOOD- U.S. ARMY.**

There was still an army. People had survived. The _government_ had survived. He found himself growing misty-eyed, and the other woman, whose name tag stated that her last name was 'Chase', grew panicked.

"Hey, it's okay, are you the only one? Did you survive?"

Frank's wet his lips and rasped, "No, I'm with one other person."

"Well what are you waiting for?" Underwood demanded, slinging his assault rifle over his shoulder, "Take us to him! We can get you help."

As if on autopilot, Frank slowly turned and made his way back to Percy, aware of the setting sun. He was trembling so hard he feared he's shake right out of his own skin, and there was a funny taste in his mouth that must've just been from the plaque buildup; their supply of toothpaste had run out a few days ago.

The trio for soldiers exchanged quick, hushed words as Frank led them along, and he wondered just how far Beelzebub's Print had spread. Had the entire East coast been completely wiped out, forcing people to the West? Or, had they just had to migrate to the South and get themselves reorganized?

Eventually, they emerged onto the street where they'd settled down, and the soldiers inhaled sharply as they saw Percy sitting crisscross applesauce in the grass, picking at the chutes. They seemed to be intrigued and revolted at the same time, and Frank soon realized that they were regarding Blackjack, whose ugliness Frank had long since gotten used to.

"I can't believe it," he heard Chase whisper, and out of the corner of his eye he could see her twirling her blonde hair nervously. "I can't fucking believe it."

 _Me neither,_ Frank wanted to say, but his vocal cords failed to work.

Blackjack was the first one to sense them, his ears pricking as he turned his sightless gaze in their direction, and once Percy saw Blackjack reacting, he, too noticed them.

"Frank?" he called out timidly, rising to his feet, and Frank gave him a tight smile as he stepped onto the lawn and stopped. "Frank, who are these people?"

"We're here to help," Chase stated firmly, stepping forward, and in that moment, Frank knew that she was, without a doubt, the leader. "I'm Annabeth, and that's Grover and Juniper. We're with the military."

"How'd you find us?" Percy whispered, breathless and wide-eyed, and he looked just as awed as Frank felt.

"We were going to scope out the area," Annabeth explained, and Frank found amusement in how she excluded the fact that she was going against orders by doing so. "And we ran into your buddy Frank. Care to tell us what happened?"

"You'll be here for a while," Frank admitted, and the soldier responded by plopping down onto the grass, her comrades following her lead.

"We have time," Juniper replied, sidling up to Grover and resting her head on his shoulder.

"Well, can we treat you to some canned foods raided from dead people's houses?"

"We have protein bars in our bags if you'd like some."

"Oh god, you have no idea."

-Ω-

"We're from New York City," Frank mumbled around his mouthful of food, trying to savor his protein bar but wolfing it down anyway. He was immediately given another, which he gobbled down with gusto. One doesn't fully appreciate the importance and beauty of protein bars until they're gone. "Well, I'm actually from Long Island, but I went to New York City because there was more supplies there."

"How much do you know about what happened?" Annabeth asked, sitting back and munching on her own protein bar. Her grey eyes glittered with intelligence, and Frank knew that she was more than excited to hear their side of the story.

"There was an epidemic. Beelzebub's Print. And then suddenly whole buildings collapsed. Whoever survived the collapses eventually got the Print," Percy murmured, and Frank was surprised to found that he was picking at his food. Frank knew that that boy could eat like a horse when he wanted to, and the survivor had no idea how the ex-patient was managing to restrain himself from devouring a protein bar of all things.

"Yep," Grover confirmed, stroking his chin and the puff of facial hair that was there. "That's about right. Nobody knows how or why all the buildings collapsed, maybe a terrorist attack or something, but what's strange is that this happened in two other parts of the country."

"Beelzebub's Print?"

"No, the building collapses," Juniper replied. "Three areas, all urban; every building within a mile radius of the city crumbling. That's not the weirdest part, though." She paused, thinking about what she would say next. "Two out of the three cities that were affected had something odd come along with the carnage. New York City, as you should know, had the highest concentration of people with Beelzebub's Print. The building failure went on for a mile out in all directions, but the spread of Beelzebub's Print went at least one hundred sixty miles out, all the way down to Cape May, New Jersey."

"Oh my god," Frank whispered.

"No shit. New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and a sliver of New Hampshire were affected. The whole Northeast has been evacuated and quarantined, and they even made a new Washington D.C. in South Carolina called 'Little Washington D.C.'. They're hoping it'll be temporary."

"It's not looking too good as of right now," Percy mumbled, and Annabeth chuckled lightheartedly.

"Mind you, these three cities all collapsed at the same exact time: 10:47 a.m. EST on April 28th," Grover pointed out. "That's why they're leaning towards terrorist attack. It couldn't've possibly been a coincidence that these places just imploded in unison at the same time."

"What were the other cities that crumbled?" Frank asked. He was glad that Beelzebub's Print hadn't spread and killed everyone in the world, but he was also incredibly wary about the fact that all of these cities were destroyed. How could that be possible? Surely the authorities would've noticed if terrorists had been planting bombs on all of the buildings?

"Santa Rosa, California was one of them. It's the city closest to Jack London's Wolf House, and, like with New York City, every building in a mile radius had structural failure," Annabeth explained. "This time, instead of Beelzebub's Print, there was a gigantic famine. One hundred sixty miles of trees, bushes, grasses, crops, flowers, and trees all withered. Massive wildlife casualties. Some people were able to survive the building collapses and got out, but once scientists got there to investigate, they found that all of the water had been sucked from the soil, as if someone had sewed the land with salt. No one will ever be able to grow anything there again, it seems."

"What could've caused that?" Percy asked, shocked, but something in his eyes made Frank wonder if the ex-patient already knew the answer.

"We don't know. It's a phenomenon. The whole world is talking about it, making theories and trying to explain it. Even the greatest of scientists are baffled," Juniper replied, her fingers lacing together with Grover's.

"What about the last city? What happened with that one?" Frank demanded, patting Blackjack's neck as the horse snuffled around the survivor, probably in hopes of finding crumbs of his protein bars.

"That's the problem; we don't know," Annabeth murmured, running her fingers over the barrel of her gun. "In Las Vegas, buildings collapsed, per the norm, but there was no famine or disease or whatever. Even so, there were no survivors. None at all. They weren't crushed or sick or starving or anything, they simply…died."

"Oh."

They lapsed into silence for a while, and Frank kept glancing over at Percy, full to bursting with concern. The boy had lost his appetite, not even bothering to finish his protein bar, and was staring at the ground.

"Before you recount your adventures, I need you guys to be honest with us," Annabeth began, and she, Juniper, and Grover all rose in unison. "We need to know if any of you, including your horse, is sick. We're going to bring you guys to a populated area, and we can't have everyone dying because you guys are carriers."

"And what will you do if we do have it?" Percy demanded fiercely and stood up, and all of the color drained out of Annabeth's face as the ex-patient rolled up his sleeve and revealed the black handprint on his wrist. The three soldiers were on high alert immediately, and Frank felt his heart sink as they all took several steps back, unslinging their guns. No, no, no, no. This couldn't be happening. They just met these new people, just had a chance to get back to the real world and meet people and be normal again, and now they were the enemy.

His heart jackhammering in his chest, Frank raised his hands in the air slowly, rising to his feet and trying not to make any sudden moves as three barrels were leveled at his and Percy's chests.

"I'm sorry," Annabeth murmured, and Frank saw her gun trembling a bit. "Both of you, I am so sorry."

"Just take us into quarantine!" Frank pleaded, and instead of feeling hopelessness and gut-wrenching sadness, his hands began to curl into fists, though he still kept them raised. "You'll see that I don't have it, and Percy doesn't show symptoms. We've been traveling together for months, and I have never gotten it from him. He hasn't died, obviously, and I swear on my life that he won't infect any of you. You'd think if he was contagious you'd already have the black handprint right now, right?"

On instinct, the soldiers rolled up their left sleeves, and Frank could hear their heavy exhales as they found that their wrists were completely clear.

"Let's say we believe you," Annabeth growled, hefting her gun a little higher. "We bring you back to our camp. The three of us are either punished for going out and bringing threats back without authorization, or we're rewarded for finding survivors. By then, it's not going to be our call on what to do with you. Do you really want to risk that? Risk the government?"

"I'd rather die," Percy spat, and Frank felt himself freeze, turning slowly to his companion, recalling the words he'd said on the first day that they'd met:

 _"_ _If there are lives left to save," Percy answered, and a furrow had appeared in his brow, "But if you're suggesting that I hand myself over to another set of doctors who'll experiment and jab needles in my arm every five seconds, then count me out." Frank's face fell. "I'm not going through that again."_

Blood began to roar in his ears, and his shoulders began to tremble as he imagined Percy being ripped away from him, dragged kicking and screaming to a laboratory that would experiment on him for days on end without rest. Once they were done and had looked their fill, Percy would have withered away from the drugs given to him and the procedures inflicted upon him. All he saw was red, and he felt his face contorting.

"F-F-Frank?" Juniper's voice was trembling almost as much as her gun was. "Frank are you okay?"

He locked eyes with her, and suddenly found himself trying to push all of his inhuman rage at her, trying to get her to understand just how furious he was, and he saw her eyes glaze over for a moment.

 _Feel what I feel, see what I see,_ Frank bellowed to her, shoving images of Percy screaming and thrashing on an operating table, a shot plunged into his neck to make him pass out as the doctors prepared to dissect him.

And suddenly Juniper wasn't human, at least, not anymore. A bloody tear trickled down her face before her gun clattered do the ground.

 _Feel what I feel!_ Frank roared as Juniper leapt onto Grover, tearing at him with nothing but her teeth and fingernails. Frank let out a strangled laugh as Grover screamed, firing wildly in all directions as Juniper bit down onto his cheek and tore the flesh from his skull, revealing shiny white teeth and pulsing muscle. Annabeth let out a terrified shriek, but she was too weak in mind to think of shooting her friend, instead trying to grab her and pull her off of Grover.

 _See what I see!_ And suddenly Grover was fighting back, his teeth plunging into Juniper's neck as blood exploded from her jugular, joining the tears of blood that were streaming down his cheeks.

His hands shook uncontrollably, and his mind was just a haze of fog, and he could dimly register Percy walking forwards. Annabeth was screaming and crying as Juniper and Grover tore each other to shreds, and when Percy touched her shoulder, she turned to face him. All that Frank could see was Percy grabbing onto Annabeth's wrist and the blonde letting out a strangled cry, ripping her wrist away and gaping at the black handprint that was left behind. Her veins began to turn black, and Frank saw it racing up her arms and crawling up her neck, outlining the spider webs of veins against her skin.

She let out another cry before her eyes rolled up into her head and she collapsed onto the ground, dead.

And then it was just Percy, Frank, a corpse, and what was left of two soldiers.

Frank didn't have it in him to feel remorse.

-Ω-

 **(A/N) Yeah, so that was pretty dark. PLEASE REVIEW I KNOW YOURE READING THIS AND YOU'RE GONNA BE LIKE 'NAH' BUT PLEASE REVIEW IT MAKES MY DAY WHENEVER I READ A REVIEW SO PLEASE DO THAT.**

 _DISCLAIMER: None of these characters or chapter titles are my own: the characters are Rick's and all the chapter titles are from certain songs, including: Semi-Automatic by TOP, Trouble by Valerie Broussard, Sippy Cup by Melanie Martinez, The River by Blues Saraceno, and Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums by A Perfect Circle._


	7. Talk Enough Sense and You Lose Your Mind

_"_ _I watched on as the Lamb broke open the second seal,_

 _and I heard the second living creature cry out, "Come!"_

 _Then another horse appeared, a red one. Its rider was given a mighty sword_

 _and the ability to take peace away from the world._

 _And there was war and slaughter everywhere."_

 _-Revelation 6:4_

-Ω-

Frank found that the best way to talk about the encounter with the soldiers was to _not_ talk about it.

He hadn't known what had come over him, but he was pretty sure that it wasn't human. How was it possible to feel so much rage? So much hatred towards a couple of people that he'd just met? Towards others who were justified in their actions? Who were afraid?

They'd found two shovels in a nearby shed and buried them, or at least what was left of them, in someone's front yard, and Frank didn't think that he could hate himself more than he did in that moment as he placed bouquets of partially-withered flowers, ripped up from people's lawns, onto the churned earth. They deserved better. They deserved a sermon with a priest, and if they weren't Christian, they deserved whatever their religion called for. He and Percy had basically desecrated the bodies, taking their bulletproof vests, helmets, backpacks, gas masks, and, of course, their assault rifles. Percy had taken Grover's boots, since they'd been about the same size, and the two of them had buried the soldiers hastily before taking off. The graves had been a rush jobs, and in a couple of rainfalls the bodies would probably start to peek out from the dirt, but Percy and Frank couldn't spare any more time.

"We have to get out of here before their squadron comes looking," Frank growled through clenched teeth as he decided to abandoned the huge military packs in favor of stuffing all the supplies into the tote bags. Blackjack should be able to carry it; their supplies had been dwindling, so the bags had been incredibly light beforehand. "We just killed people. I just killed two people."

"What do you mean?" Percy asked as he hopped onto Blackjack's back, grabbing fistfuls of his mane.

"Stop playing stupid!" Frank bellowed, and fear spiked in his gut as that same, roiling anger reared its head slightly and blinked blearily, not entirely awake and ready to kill. It would be soon, though, if Frank didn't calm his temper. Even so, he kept on, "I know you know something that I don't!"

"What makes you think that?" Percy demanded as he whipped Blackjack into a canter, and Frank knew that it was the green-eyed boy's way of trying to avoid the conversation. The survivor scowled and sprinted after them, and luckily Percy didn't seem to intend to leave him in the dust, slowing Blackjack's gait down to a trot after they'd gone a safe enough distance from the graves.

Frank wasn't going to let this go so easily, and as soon as he was jogging side-by-side with Blackjack, he was talking again, his tone accusing, "You killed that girl. You killed Annabeth. I killed Juniper and Grover, but you killed Annabeth. You-you…"

"Infected her," Percy finished softly, refusing to meet Frank's gaze.

"You said you weren't contagious!" the survivor bellowed, and he could practically feel the spittle flying from his mouth. His fists clenched at his sides, and he tried to take deep breaths, but that only made him sound like he'd run a marathon, his breath sawing in and out of his lungs despite the fact that his blood didn't need the extra oxygen.

"I never said that," Percy replied simply, finally leveling Frank with his green gaze. "You just assumed it." A muscle in his jaw jumped, and Frank felt his heart stop for a few moments. Blackjack let out a keening sound, a crow calling out a warning as dogs neared, and Frank was pretty sure that horses weren't capable of making that noise. In that moment, Frank realized that Percy wasn't just one of Frank's strays that the survivor had picked up and nursed back to health. As he watched Percy stare down at him, Frank couldn't help but compare him to a warrior. He looked like a horseman preparing for battle, a king rallying his troops, and no matter how pathetic his horse or how lackluster his muscles, he looked like a threat.

He looked like a monster.

"But how come I'm not infected?" Frank asked, feeling his fury draining, only to be replaced by fear. "Beelzebub's Print is airborne." Percy slowed Blackjack's trot to a walk, and Frank wondered if it was so he wanted to let Frank catch his breath or he wanted to be able to loom over the survivor even more than he already was.

"There's so much that you don't know, Frank Zhang," he murmured, his eyes flashing, and Frank felt like his stomach had been tied to a leaden ball and then tossed into an underwater trench.

"What?" His voice was shaking.

"Do I have to repeat myself?" Percy prompted, quirking an eyebrow. His expression was alight with humor, a sick, twisted kind that Frank knew that nothing native to this earth was capable of feeling.

"No, how do you know that my last name? I've never told you. Ever," he whispered, stopping in his tracks, and Percy pulled Blackjack to a halt, turning slightly to regard him.

"I'm pretty sure you have," he said. His words were so convincing, so full of vindication, that if Frank hadn't just seen three soldiers die gruesomely, he would've started questioning himself.

"I've never told you. Never during these past few months have I told you that my last name was Zhang. I didn't want to be reminded that I came from somewhere. That I had a family that's no longer around," Frank hissed. "How do you know? _HOW DO YOU KNOW?!"_

"I know a lot of things about a lot of people." Percy grinned a feral grin, and Frank thought he was going to pass out from fright. Sure, Percy had been a little weird, what with the talking to his horse and his overall zoned-out-ness, but Frank never knew that he was capable of this. If the Percy right now had been the one standing on the doorstep of the hospital, Frank would've kept walking. He would've kept walking and he would've never looked back. "If it makes you feel any better, my last name is Jackson."

"What's your reason for not telling me?"

"You never asked."

"Dammit, Perce!" Frank shrilled, so loudly that his voice spooked Blackjack a little. "What's going on? The cities crumbling? That's not an accident. You know something about this! You've always known something about this! What are you, a spy? A terrorist?"

"Oh, Frank." Percy's face softened, and his tone was like he was chiding a small child for doing something odd. "I'm so much worse than that."

He blinked and suddenly his eyes were white and cloudy, almost like Blackjack's, but this cloudiness encompassed his entire eye, swallowing up his pupil and leaving nothing but blank space.

"Oh my god!" Frank lunged for the weapons tote bag, but an invisible force shoved him back, tossing him a good twenty feet before he landed on his back on the sidewalk. "What the fuck are you?"

"You're asking all the wrong questions," Percy tutted, sliding off of Blackjack's back. The horse looked so much more horrifying now that the rider had revealed itself to be a monstrous beast. "I'll give you a hint: it starts with 'what the fuck' and ends with 'are _we_?'"

"What do you mean, we?" Frank spat, and he felt like he was going to start hyperventilating.

"Frank, you're not the sharpest knife in the shed, I hope you understand that," Percy scoffed, beginning to slowly walk forward. The only things that Frank could look at were his blank white eyes and his dead man's shoes. "Why do you think I kept you around? Surely not because I actually appreciated your company?"

Wow, that was a low blow. Over these difficult months, Frank had come to call them friends, and it made this revelation all the more worse. He'd been sleeping next to this thing. He'd been scavenging with him, surviving with him, _befriending_ him, and now Frank was here in these suburbs with the blood of two soldiers on his hands and some sort of creature wearing his friend's face.

"What do you want from me?" Frank managed to choke out as he hauled himself to his feet, his eyes darting around to see if there were any bats or clubs or scraps lying around that he could hit this thing upside the head with. There was nothing.

"Oh, nothing," Percy told him pettily. "But we were destined to work together, and right now you aren't doing your part."

"I _never_ agreed to work with you."

"Ah, yes, but you were chosen. Chosen by one who is greater than all of us." It was official. This guy was somehow salvaging drugs and had taken a whole fuckload of them. Maybe it would explain the white eyes, but not the invisible force that had shoved Frank. Not the way he killed Annabeth. "It's quite morbid, isn't it?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Frank bellowed, backing up a step for every step that Percy took forwards.

"Why, Armageddon of course," Percy let out a hysterical laugh like he'd just made the funniest joke, and it made Frank want to vomit. "The man upstairs truly has a sense of humor." Percy raised his hands, and his sleeve slipped down just low enough to reveal the black handprint on his wrist. His own handprint.

"A boy who hates sickness more than anyone forced to spread it." He pointed to Frank, his eyes glinting like razors. "A boy who lost his mother and father to war, forced to cause it."

Frank would've argued, but then he thought back to the way that Juniper had attacked Grover. The way that Grover had begun fighting back. Frank had told them to fight, so they'd fought.

Percy continued, his smile widening manically, "There are two, others, too. A boy whose sister starved herself to death because of a women's cult, who now bears a touch that makes everything wither and die. Another boy who lost everything to death, now holding the scythe. Fate has no pity, don't you agree?"

Frank thought his head was going to explode, thought he would pass out from fear and from a shortage in his brain. It didn't make sense. Nothing made sense. Sickness? War? Famine? Death? Time seemed to stop, and a single tear trickled down Frank's face.

No, it wasn't sickness, war, famine, and death. It was _pestilence_ , war, famine, and death.

 **THE HORSEMEN WALK AMONG US**

"Y-y-you caused Beelzebub's Print? You're the one who made all this happen, who killed all those people?" He was trembling so hard he thought he would shake right out of his own skin.

"Patient Zero, in the flesh," Percy chuckled, but there was no humor behind it. "Not only was I the first, but oddly enough, I was the one who lived the longest." His teeth looked like razors in the light of the dying sun. "It was me. It was all me, and it started when I grabbed the wrist of a nurse giving me food."

"Do you know what you've done?!"

"Very much so. It's in the job description," Percy sneered at him. "Too bad that the big G didn't tell me that it meant my family would die too. Isn't that wonderful? I was such a fool. But you, you didn't have a choice. You're special."

"Not in a good way," Frank bit, his fists clenching. His confusion and anxiety and terror were all being poured into a mixing pot and being stirred into a churning mass of fury. He wanted to kill Percy. He wanted to break the ex-patient's spine over his knee, because now he knew that he _could._ "I would've denied it in a heartbeat."

"I don't disagree, but see the thing I'm trying to tell you, Frank, is that we were all good people at one point or another." He paused, the hard, mangled edges of his warped expression softening a bit as he stared at his stolen shoes. "But you have to change. You have to change or else the guilt crushes you. You see Juniper and Grover? There will be thousands of more Junipers and Grovers out there. These Junipers and Grovers will be men, women, and children, and they will all fall at your hand."

"But I don't want that," Frank hissed, and Percy let out another hysterical laugh.

"It doesn't matter what you want, silly! It doesn't matter at all!" he cackled. "We're the harbingers of the apocalypse, the critically acclaimed Four Horsemen, and it doesn't matter if we want to or not; it's our fate. You were doomed as soon as you were conceived; your story is already written, Frank, and this is how it ends."

"I'm not a Horsemen. I don't even have a horse." Frank's voice was wet and cracking in places.

"You'll find it. Eventually. But I need you to understand that once you find your horse, we have to begin."

"Begin what?"

"Don't play dumb, you already know. We've already found our horses- God sent them to us. He can't communicate with you, though; you're uncontrollable. A loose cannon. A rebel that would like to do anything but bow and serve. You have to find your horse yourself, and the dawn afterward we will set out. Only America was affected by the famine, plague, death, and the crumbling cities- that's what happens when you're Chosen- but now the real Apocalypse has to begin."

"How will it work?" Frank had gone numb.

"We ride together. Unlike what it says in the Bible, it won't come in waves. It will be all at once. Crops will wither and die as people with black handprints on their wrists tear each other to shreds, and Death will collect their souls to bring them to Purgatory for judgement."

"There's a Purgatory?" Frank whispered.

"And a Heaven. And a Hell. We're bringing forth the Kingdom of God, and pray for anyone who dare stands in our path."

Frank said nothing, instead shouldering past Percy and towards Blackjack. The horse shuffled nervously as Frank rifled through the tote bags, and Percy watched on wordlessly as Frank found what he was looking for. The ex-patient gave him space as Frank dropped the thing on the ground and dug out a box of matches from his jacket pocket, his first match setting alight on the first strike. Expressionlessly, Frank dropped it and watch as the small flame grew and grew until it had erupted into a reasonably sized fire.

"Let's go," Frank rasped, and Percy nodded before clambering back onto Blackjack, who immediately began to walk on. Frank didn't look back.

As they left, the sightless button eyes of Bear watched them, before they eventually melted into nothing.

A half hour later, there was nothing left but ashes.

-Ω-

 **(A/N) There it is! The big announcement! Most of you already predicted it, but this was a pretty intense chapter nonetheless. PLEASE REVIEW I LOVED THE REVIEW SUPPORT LAST TIME PLEASE KEEP IT UP I WRITE FASTER WHEN I KNOW PEOPLE ARE READING.**

 **Chapter title is from the song I Found by Amber Run**


	8. Word of Prophets Written on Subway Walls

_"_ _But the fearful and unbelieving, and the abominable and murderers,_

 _And whoremongers and sorcerers, and idolaters and all liars,_

 _Shall have part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone:_

 _Which is the second death."_

 _-Revelation 21:8_

-Ω-

Frank didn't talk to Percy for three days. It wasn't intentional…okay, maybe it was a little intentional, but he was too preoccupied with trying to figure out who he was than with trying to figure out his companion. He found it incredibly hard to believe that he was one of the Horsemen, especially War; he considered himself a nice person. It wasn't like the death of his parents made him bitter; it was quite the opposite, actually. He considered himself much nicer than he'd been before he'd lost his mother and father, and he didn't know if he was worthy of the title 'War'.

Percy had said it was just because Fate was cruel, that the one who hated war the most was destined to cause it, but Frank didn't think he considered himself a hater of war. Sure, it was bad and should stop, but it wasn't like his parents had died for a lost cause; they'd gone down while fighting for their country, and sometimes war was necessary if it meant giving one's life to protect people. Frank was pretty sure that there were candidates, hippies, mostly, that would be much more devastated to spread war than Frank.

But he'd been Chosen or whatever, and now he was stuck with it.

One thing that he couldn't wrap his head around was the whole Apocalypse/Armageddon/End of the World thing. Frank's family had never been the religious type, not counting Frank's grandmother, so as a result, Frank wasn't raised religious. For his entire life, he was pretty iffy on whether or not there was a God, and once the city had crumbled and Beelzebub's Print had killed everyone within a one hundred sixty mile radius, he'd been pretty sure there wasn't a God; how could God let something like that happen? How could _anyone_ let something like that happen? Then Percy had come along and told him that he was one of the Horsemen, which really threw him into a loop. If he was a Horseman, than God had to have been the one who had Chosen him and was commanding, and perhaps communicating with, all the others. Percy had even mentioned the guy by name a few times when breaking the news, and Frank was having a serious crisis- he'd spent his entire life being on the fence about God and suddenly _poof!_ Guess what? There was one!

It gave him a headache whenever he thought about it, so he decided that the best way to handle it was to not think. He went completely numb, his mind going blank, and just concentrated on surviving and getting south. They'd handle the problem of finding his horse when the time came. In the meantime, Frank gave Percy and Blackjack a wide berth, only stooping in to snag the occasional snack from the supply bags, but otherwise he wouldn't dare go near them. Percy had said that, as a Horseman, he couldn't get sick, but Frank was still wary after the incident with Annabeth; what if Percy decided that he was tired of Frank's bitching and whining? Would Frank keel over and die from Beelzebub's Print once Percy caught him off-guard and grabbed his wrist?

They walked and walked, and despite the progress they were making, the streets still remained abandoned. There was no sign of life anywhere, and Frank supposed that they still hadn't crossed the one hundred sixty mile radius yet, considering they sill saw victims of the Print sprawled in the street. Sometimes when they took breaks, Frank would make the rats that scuttled too close tear each other to pieces, and pretty soon whole colonies were either dead or dying from their wounds, the smell so rancid they were forced to keep moving. Percy never commented, but sometimes if one of Frank's red-eyed rats chased another rat close enough, he would reach out and touch it. It would die instantly.

Finally, after politely tolerating the Silent Treatment for days on end, Percy snapped.

"What the fuck, dude?"

Frank looked away from the small fire they'd made and met Percy's intense green gaze, which burned like the flames in front of them. Frank felt hollow, like someone had taken an ice cream scooper and scraped out all of his insides, and he sized up Percy for a few moments before returning his gaze to the fire and the can of beans that was being cooked on it, fiddling with the ring of stones they'd placed around the flames so that the grass wouldn't catch fire.

"Talk to me, Frank," Percy pleaded, scooting closer. Blackjack, seeming to sense his master's distress, walked over and began to butt his head against Percy's, nuzzling him in an attempt to comfort. The green-eyed boy gently pushed his head away. "Please, Frank, please talk to me."

Frank didn't. He just stared into the fire, uncaring of the fact that the light and the smoke burned his eyes. At least he was feeling something, anything.

"Listen, I can't handle silence anymore, not after the hospital." Percy sounded desperate, and Frank hated himself for taking delight in the way that the green-eyed boy was begging.

He still didn't say anything.

"Why the fuck aren't you talking? Are you mad at me?" Percy demanded, and out of the corner of his eye, Frank could see him digging ferocious furrows into the ground with the thick nub of a stick. They stood out like claw marks against the grass, and Frank looked down at his own hands, wondering if his fingernails would eventually fall off, replaced by long, serrated black claws meant to tear and slice. He wouldn't be surprised if it happened.

Frank still refused to reply, and he could see Percy growing more and more frustrated by the minute.

The green-eyed boy made a strangled sound in the back of his throat and stabbed the stick he'd been fiddling with into the dirt, which was a feat, considering the fact that the ground was rock-hard this time of year. He stared at it for a few moments with a look like it had personally offended him, and after a while he yanked it out and tossed it into the fire, his eyes reflecting the way that the flames leapt as they were given a new food source.

After a long period where silence reigned, Percy whispered, "I miss my mom." His voice was so quiet that Frank nearly missed it, but he felt numb, not deaf.

He looked up sharply after he was finally able to process the words, only to find Percy staring at his hands, which were clasped limply in his lap. Frank's heart sank as a tear trickled down the boy's face.

"I miss my mom," he repeated, tears falling in earnest now, and he wiped furiously at his cheeks as if it would somehow make it better. "And my step-dad Paul and my little sister. I…" his voice broke. "I killed them. It was my fault. I shouldn't've taken the deal, I should've just died."

Frank contemplated what to do for a few moments before saying, "I agree." His voice was hoarse and croaky from misuse, and Percy let out a choked sob and buried his face in his hands. "But this is how it is now. So we have to deal with it."

"I act like I'm not sorry, but I am. Every day I grow less and less human. I'm deteriorating and I can feel it," Percy let out another strangled sob. "I'm human, I can prove it, I promise. _I'm human._ "

Frank didn't want to extend his sympathy. Percy had a hand in wrecking the world, and it was his own fault that his family died, but, as mentioned before, Frank's hardships only made him kinder. The survivor shuffled over a bit and wrapped his arm around Percy's shoulders, and the boy immediately turned to cry into Frank's hoodie, the material dampening with his tears, though Frank could barely notice it, considering the fact that it was his fourth layer. The survivor wanted to say something soothing, to tell Percy that it would all turn out okay, but that would be a lie. They sat like that for a while, and it took a few moments for Frank to realize that one of Percy's hands was fisted in his coat and the other was clutching his wrist.

He didn't get sick.

-Ω-

The tension eased up between them after that fateful night, and Frank found his life grow increasingly more carefree since then. The lighthearted chitchat that they shared lifted his spirits and warded off the heavy silence that had more often than not settled on his shoulders, and it kept the loneliness at bay, reminding Frank that he had a companion, a friend, by his side that was there for him. For the umpteenth time since meeting Percy, Frank wondered how he'd managed to survive alone for so long.

Their conversations were about ordinary, everyday things, almost like they were ignoring the carnage around them, but Frank was totally fine with that; the less he had to discuss the state of shit that the world was in, the more he felt at ease. He and Percy enthused about the Yankees and other things as if they were just two teens that had met at school, and Frank told Percy about how he'd moved from Canada to California and then to New York, and how his family was originally from China.

"Never in my life had I met a Chinese-Canadian," Percy mused, and then proceeded to tell Frank about his Greek heritage, and how his family was bat-shit crazy. "They're all named after Greek gods and goddesses on my dad's side. You have no idea how hard it is to pronounce their names, and they were all horrible, horrible people. My dad died when I was young, so my mom and I lost touch with them thank God, and I had two step-dads."

Frank tried not to dwell on the word 'had', and he quickly filled up the awkward silence by telling Percy about the time that his mom had convinced him he could shapeshift when he was six. "Of course, she told me the truth when I jumped out of a second story window thinking I could turn into a bird," Frank chuckled. "I broke my leg."

Percy laughed for a good long time at that, tears streaming down his face to the point where he almost fell off of Blackjack. The normalcy was much-needed, in Frank's opinion.

There was one issue, though, and that was the fact that they weren't south enough for it to be warm yet. In the mornings, the wind nipped at their cheeks and noses, their hoods doing little to help their ears, and at night they all curled together in the living rooms of drafty and crumbling houses, trying not to freeze to death. Even the blankets that they stole off of beds did little to help, and if Frank hadn't been so exhausted, he probably would've gotten mad, which he was trying to avoid doing for obvious reasons.

They always brought Blackjack, who was still as cheerful and alive as ever- despite the fact that Frank was pretty sure he shouldn't be, inside, and even though Frank knew that Blackjack was intelligent enough to know what was going on, the horse acted like he was blissfully ignorant; prancing about with goods, and occasionally Percy or Frank, on his back like he had no cares in the world.

Frank wondered if his horse would be like Blackjack, but he decided that he'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

They'd fallen into a comfortable quiet, and had been walking for most of the morning, which was as bitterly cold as it had been yesterday. Frank had been deep in thought, thinking and worrying about all of the things that he'd pledged not to think and worrying about, but was jolted out of his reveries by Percy's excited cry, "Frank, look!"

There, in the middle of the road, was a jackpot in the form of two dead guys that were sprawled side-by-side next to an obnoxiously yellow Prius. Immediately, Percy kicked Blackjack into a short-lived canter, leaving Frank struggling to catch up; despite the fact that they had assault weapons, Frank still liked to have his bat, which had stuck with him since the beginning. Needless to say, it weighed him down considerably, and made it even harder to catch up with a horse than it was without anything in hand.

Frank thanked whoever was listening that, despite the fact that the dead guys' organs painted the sidewalk and their faces were partially chewed up by the teeth of dogs and rats, their coats were still blissfully intact, made to withstand the harsh Northeastern winters. One of the guys had dark skin and was wearing a very fashionable trench coat, and his blood-caked beard and hair had to have been combed neatly at one point or another. He was shorter than Frank was, about 5'5", but he was stockier, and he looked to be about the Frank's size, so the survivor began the tedious process of removing it from his person. Had this event been any point earlier in his life, Frank would've thrown up three times over the course of the extraction, but now he was only a bit squeamish as he moved aside some of the dude's small intestines in order to wrestle the trench coat off of him. He was pretty sure he heard a few bones snap in the process, but eventually Frank was holding up a warm-looking, and noticeably bloodstained, piece of clothing.

Percy had better luck with the skinnier dude, who looked kind of like an anime character who'd been ripped to shreds, and had managed to get his black leather jacket off of him with minimal contact with his insides that had gotten outside. He'd also taken his red-and-white striped scarf, though the odd angle that the guy's head was bent at suggested that that had taken a little more effort.

"Whoa, dude, nice trench coat," Percy said, sounding impressed. His expression clearly stated: _Not bad._

"I'll trade it for the leather jacket," Frank deadpanned, and Percy's face lit up like a kid's on Christmas.

"Deal."

They traded coats and shook hands, and just like that they were on the road again. Frank had been wearing the same hoodies and clothes for a while now, the days and nights too cold to dare and change out of them, but now he felt felt incredibly stylish in his leather jacket, which, to his surprise and delight, was lined on the inside with fur. The anime dude must've been leaded if he was able to get his hands on it.

Percy sat regally upon Blackjack, the garish and, in Frank's opinion, quite disgusting scarf dangling nearly down to his toes, which was saying something since Percy had wrapped it three times around his neck and was a pretty tall guy. Even though his trench coat was ill-fitting, he still looked quite warm, which Frank was glad for. The survivor couldn't help but think that his companion's wardrobe looked like a combination of the fourth and tenth doctors' from _Doctor Who,_ if the fourth and tenth doctors had been the offspring of Satan himself.

"You're staring," Percy noted, his lips quirking as he played with Blackjack's mane, which the white horse seemed to be enjoying immensely.

"What can I say?" Frank asked, hefting his baseball bat. The weight of it was comforting. "You look stylish."

"You look like a discount Chinese-Canadian version of Negan from _The Walking Dead_."

"Well, since you're on the horse that would make you Rick Grimes."

"True, true, but I'm pretty sure Blackjack here would eat all of the Walkers before they could get to him. He'll eat fucking anything."

"Including rotting corpses?"

"Including rotting corpses."

The two of them laughed.

-Ω-

 **(A/N) I was thinking, should I start answering reviews in the AN?**

 **THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT ILY PLZ REVIEW. This chapter was lighthearted to make up for the major fucked-up-ness of the last few chapters. There were also other references to other books/characters from the Riordanverse in this chapter, if you were able to pick up on it.**

 **The chapter title is by a cover of the Sound of Silence by the band Disturbed**


	9. Bury Me In All My Favorite Colors

_"_ _When He broke open the third seal, I heard the third living creature cry out,_

 _'_ _Come!' And I looked, and behold a black horse,_

 _And he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand._

 _And I heard a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying,_

 _'_ _A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius;_

 _and do not damage the oil and the wine.'"_

 _-Revelation 6:5_

-Ω-

It was at this time that Percy began to coach Frank on how to be a harbinger of the apocalypse. Of course, the two of them didn't call it that, since they tried to steer clear of the subject that pertained to them slaughtering millions of innocent people, so the teachings came in the form of little lessons that they could do when they had time to kill. It wasn't like they were in any rush; all they wanted to do was get south enough for there to be no winter, and then they would probably start making their way west, where they would, inevitably, meet up with Famine and Death, though if Percy knew what they looked like or what their names were, he wouldn't tell.

"Okay, so first thing's first," Percy stated as he unloaded the last of their supplies from Blackjack's back. He refused help as he lugged the bags over to the curb, dropping them next to the corpse of a woman who lay face down on the pavement. A chill went down Frank's spine when he realize that it didn't really bother him to see that anymore. "Saddles are for pussies, and if you even consider trying to look for one, then fuck you."

"Way to put it bluntly," Frank chuckled, running his hand over Blackjack's patchy coat and feeling a little nervous. He hadn't been on a horse in his life, not even a pony at a birthday party, and even though he knew that Blackjack was the most docile thing he'd ever met he still feared that the horse would buck him off. "So how do I get on?"

"I don't know, you tell me," Percy retorted and crossed his arms over his chest, quirking a brow as he leaned against a skimpy tree that looked like it was clinging to life. When Frank began to lead Blackjack over to use the curb as a step, Percy snapped, "Frank, you're being a loser. Get on the fucking horse. We're not going to wait for you to get a little stepstool."

Percy meant "we" as in "the Horsemen", but of course he didn't mention that, because that made things awkward between them for a couple of hours.

"Shut up," Frank hissed, wondering if he should just plant his hands on Blackjack's back and haul himself over. Then again, the horse was so frail, and he was used to carrying Percy everywhere; Percy wasn't nearly as heavy as Frank was, and the survivor feared he would break the poor guy's back if he tried to get on without assistance. "I've never been on a horse before."

"Then you're going to have a bit of a problem, aren't you?" Percy pointed out, and he seemed to be enjoying Frank's puzzlement much more than Frank would've liked. "I mean, horses are in the job description."

"Yes, but whoever arranged this whole thing was too dumb to think of putting an 'experience required' note on his nonexistent job application," Frank barked, grinding his teeth together as his fists clenched. A nearby squirrel suddenly let out a screech and attacked its partner, its eyes glowing red, and Frank took deep breaths to soothe himself before the entire rodent population in a three mile radius was wiped out.

Percy didn't poke fun at him for calming himself down, and when Frank wasn't smoking at the ears anymore, he asked, "Can Blackjack even hold my weight?" He was amused and slightly fearful that it wasn't Percy who replied this time, but rather Blackjack, who tossed his head a whinnied as if offended.

 _Of course I can hold your weight, asshole!_ he seemed to say.

Blackjack's approval seemed to egg Frank on, and with a grunt he launched himself up and on, draping himself over the horse's back. The gelding shifted a bit to adjust to the extra weight, but otherwise seemed unharmed. Frank shifted around until he was straddling the horse's sides, too busy trying to maneuver to really pay attention much, and when he sat up he realized that he was facing the wrong end. He looked up to see Percy slide to the ground, holding his chest as he was racked with fits of laughter.

"I think I peed a little!" Percy guffawed, laughing so hard there were tears in his eyes. "Oh my god I wish I had a phone!" Frank was, indeed, thankful that Percy didn't have a phone, and he grumbled a few unflattering things under his breath as he moved around a little more to sit the right way.

Percy was too busy laughing his ass off to really care, and Frank had to wait a full five minutes before Percy was coherent enough to continue with the lesson. He tried to seem cross and about to get mad, but he couldn't help but let out a snort at the way that Percy was laughing so hard, which didn't really happen very often anymore.

"Okay, okay," the green-eyed boy chuckled a bit, the sound strangled as he tried to force it back. He took a deep breath and let it out, giggling a bit before saying, "Now, what you want to do is take two fistfuls of his mane, yep like that, and hold on tight with your calves. No, not your knees, your calves." Frank felt like an idiot, but Percy wasn't laughing anymore, so that was good. "Now, squeeze his sides with your heels and he'll go."

Frank tried that and, shockingly, Blackjack began to go.

"Now, you need more steering with Blackjack because he's fucking blind, so whenever you approach an obstacle, squeeze your leg on the side that the obstacle is on and he'll move away."

They spend the rest of the day like that, with Percy being a hard ass and making sure that Frank was doing everything right. Eventually, Frank was able to trot without falling off, which was murder on his ass, and after that he was able to canter. It was a lot to do in just a day, but Frank found that he caught on quickly, and on top of that, Percy let him advance to the next gait when he really shouldn't've.

For a while, Frank felt human.

-Ω-

"Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!"

Cheering ensued as Leo drained the huge pitcher, and the Latino boy grinned lopsidedly as the amassed crowd of teenagers dispersed to go find other things that suited their interests. Not three seconds ago, that thing had been Leo Valdez, and the curly-haired boy hiccupped a bit and wondered why the world was tilting so badly.

The neon lights partially blinding him, he hopped off the table he'd been standing on, nearly falling on his face in the process, and stumbled through the crowd of college students who were celebrating the conclusion of that year's midterms. There was beer pong set up in the kitchen, and people were getting high out on the balcony, the stench of weed drifting through the glass double doors and into Dakota's living room. For a moment, Leo's alcohol-addled brain felt sorry for the guy, because he'd have to air out the place for a while before he could get rid of the smell, but considering his parents wouldn't be back until the end of that week, it shouldn't be much of a problem.

He drifted from conversation to conversation, too drunk to really talk much, and sometime during then someone had written the barely eligible words "BAD BOY SUPREME" on Leo's bicep. He didn't care as long as it wasn't a dick, and let out a chuckle as Dakota, the host and perhaps the richest kid in the school, tried to snort Cheeto dust. The guy ended up face-planting, going cross-eyed as the drinks caught up to him, and Leo was glad that he was just drunk enough to be discombobulated but not as drunk as Dakota.

His (parents') penthouse was brimming with just about every Junior and Senior in the school, and they were all having a ball as they looked out onto the sprawling streets of Houston from the top floor of a gigantic skyscraper. It was a pretty sight, but only when sober. The view, combined with the tilting and spinning that came with booze, made Leo want to heave, but he had a tough stomach and managed to choke down the bile that was rising up in his throat.

"Leo!"

Leo turned to find one of his best friends, Piper, sashaying over with a red solo cup in her hand. Her face had a healthy flush to it, with just the right amount of rosiness to her cheeks, but she wasn't anywhere near drunk as she squeezed through the crowd and over to Leo, looking cross.

"Leo, you're supposed to be my ride home," she managed to yell over the heavy bass of the music. Even though her dad was an actor and she was pretty loaded, she was more for going to parties than throwing them. Besides, she flew in from California to go to school. "And Jason hasn't been answering my texts."

"What, you think the guy is going to fly out to Houston just to give you a ride home?" Leo demanded, his words coming out more slurred then he'd like them to be. He scratched his head, wondering why his hair was sticky. "Besides, Santa Rosa, his city, was one of those with the freak accidents! All the plants died around it, remember?"

"That's why I'm worried!" Piper cried, ducking out of the way as one of the Seniors attempted to crowd surf on a nonexistent crowd. "He hasn't so much as called me ever since then. He hasn't even shown up to classes!" This was news to Leo, and it made him think that he should start actually hanging out with Piper; he had no classes with her, and instead of being with Piper, he spent more time out with his Robotics Club friends, who were like brothers and sisters to him.

Leo was still sober enough to process the information and be at least slightly concerned about it. In his heart, though, he knew that Jason was probably just avoiding Piper after that fiasco on the roof of the school; towards the end of the school year, the two of them were caught on the roof watching a meteor shower, and both of them had been suspended. Jason had been a bit distant after that, being the goody two-shoes that he was, and Leo suspected that this was his way of telling Piper that it was high time to break up.

"Do you think he's okay?" Leo asked instead of voicing his suspicions, waving away a messy-haired girl trying to offer him another drink. "Do you think something happened to him?"

"I don't know." Piper's expression was pinched, and her cup had caved in under her vicious grip. "But since you're so drunk, you're coming with me to Reyna as proof that she should drive us home. Jesus, Leo, what were you thinking?"

"That's the thing, I wasn't thinking."

After much begging on Piper's part and much being drunk on Leo's part, Reyna finally agreed to drive them home.

"This party was trash anyway. I couldn't get to the Cheetos because the dust was trying to be snorted," Reyna scoffed as the elevator descended, which Drunk Leo didn't like at all. He nearly barfed, but Reyna looked just about ready to take off her sandal and beat him with it, so he knew that chucking his guts wouldn't exactly put him in the best place. The three of them made their way through the lobby, the girls supporting Leo every step of the way as his boozed up brain reacted very poorly to the mosaic of a topless woman that served as the floor, and eventually emerged out into the crisp winter air. Even though it was Texas and it wasn't cold per say, it was still chilly enough that goosebumps rose up on Leo's skin.

They spent about ten minutes searching for Reyna's clunker amidst a sea of other students' clunkers, and when they finally crawled into the bright yellow monstrosity, it was half past four in the morning. If Leo looked up, he could see the multicolored lights in the penthouse blazing and the plumes of smoke coming from the balcony, and he fumbled with his seatbelt as Reyna jiggled the keys, cursing under her breath as the engine kept stalling.

Eventually, they were off. The streets were crowded, even at this hour, but Leo didn't really mind much as he picked at the plastic bag in his lap, which Reyna had given to him with a warning, "If you throw up on my seats, you're dead, Valdez, _dead._ " The interior of the car plunged in and out of darkness as they cruised by street lamps, and the buildings passed at various speeds, sometimes whipping by and sometimes slowly crawling along.

Leo, Piper, and Reyna didn't actually live in Houston, but rather in the surrounding suburbs. The buildings grew shorter and shorter until commercial bled into residential, with petite houses set up in neat little rows on either side of the street. No one was up at this hour, so most of the windows were dark, and everything seemed eerily abandoned as the car chugged along.

Leo was so enamored with the street lights that he almost peed his pants when Reyna shouted, "Look!"

He blinked blearily, unbuckling his seat belt and sliding along the seats to the other side of the car to see where Reyna was pointing, and Piper strained to look from her spot in the passenger's seat. Leo's mind felt like it was filled with cotton, and it took a moment to realize that there were two horses eating on someone's lawn, or at least, what was left of someone's lawn. The grass was withered and sickly, and the surrounding lawns seemed to be suffering, too.

As if they knew that they were being watched, the horses stopped their grazing and looked up, their eyes reflecting the light of the headlights eerily. One of them was as black as night, its coat blending into the shadows that lurked in between the patches of light cast by the street lamps, and the other one was a pale grey, almost white.

"What the hell are horses doing on the outskirts of Houston?" Piper demanded, unbuckling her seatbelt and throwing the door open despite Reyna's protests. "C'mon, let's check it out."

"Piper, sweetheart, you're Cherokee and proud, and I'm Latina and proud. Please, let's not act like the white girls in the horror movies," Reyna recommended icily, white-knuckling the steering wheel and grinding her teeth together as Piper walked around the front of the car and cautiously picked her way over to the horses, whose ears were pricked and alert. "Besides, Leo's still drunk off his ass. We have to get him home."

"It'll only take a little bit," Piper insisted, stopping on the curb not three feet from the horses. "Now get over here, I'm too scared to go alone."

"That might be a sign for you to get back in this damn car."

Piper ignored her, still standing poised in front of the horses, and Reyna let out a string of unflattering curses in Spanish as she viciously unbuckled her seatbelt and kicked open the door on the driver's side. Before closing it, she turned to Leo with irritation sparking in her eyes.

"Take a step out of this car and I'll slap you so hard that Google won't be able to find you, got it?"

Leo nodded quickly, and Reyna's eyes narrowed as she slammed the door shut and took off towards the horses. Since Reyna had said nothing about rolling the window down, Leo did just that in order to hear what they were saying better.

"They don't seem to be owned by anyone," Piper muttered as the horses finally seemed to lose interest in them, returning to nibbling on the dead grass. "They don't have any saddles or bridles or anything."

"They must've escaped," Reyna replied, rubbing her chin. "From the equestrian team's stables, maybe?"

"The University of Houston doesn't have a fucking equestrian team," Piper snapped, and the crossness in her voice made the horses look up again. "It's almost like they're waiting for someone."

"You think they belong to these people?" Reyna asked, jerking her chin towards the house whose lawn the horses were currently devouring.

"Considering the fact that there's a ramp and a sign in the window that says 'Jesus Loves All' I'm thinking that there are old people here, and as far as I know, old people who live the suburbs of Houston, of all places, don't have horses," Piper scoffed, taking a few more steps forward. "Are they wild?"

She reached out and touched the black horse's coat, and the horse only sniffed her hand before tossing his head and returning to grazing. Piper frowned as she ran her fingers over the length of the black horse's body, and Leo was able to notice that there were defined ridges jutting against the horse's hide.

"This one's starving," Piper murmured, gently patting the horse's shoulder.

"Really?" Reyna asked, crossing her arms and sounding skeptical. "His friend here seems totally fine."

"I'm serious, put your hand here. You can't see it in the dark, but he's skin and bones."

Leo stopped listening to the conversation at that point, rolling up the window and looking down at his leg, which was jiggling restlessly. Reyna and Piper should just get back in the car so they could drive home, and even though Leo couldn't deny that he was interested in these weird mystery horses, he was exhausted. His bed sure sounded like a better alternative to the car, and Leo felt like he recognized this neighborhood- the house that he, Reyna, and Piper shared was not far from here.

Leo was so busy fantasizing about his bed that he nearly missed the face pressed against the window. The Latino, still slightly drunk, let out a yelp of astonishment as two obsidian black eyes peered at him through the window that was opposite the one facing Piper and Reyna. His heart flew in his chest as he vaguely made out the silhouette of someone behind the figure, and he was pretty sure he was going to have a heart attack at any moment.

Leo just sat there hyperventilating for a few moments before his brain put the pieces together, noting the sandy blond hair and the fact that his eyes were completely consumed by black, iris and all. His brow furrowed.

"Jason?"

-Ω-

The next day the headline of the news read:

 **THREE LOCAL COLLEGE STUDENTS FOUND DEAD WITH TWO SENIOR CITIZENS- LINK TO THE TERRORIST ATTACKS IN NEW YORK, VEGAS, AND SANTA ROSA?**

-Ω-

 **(A/N) I am so sorry about the long update! I was busy on vacation and I was working on a manuscript for my novel, which I just completed and have been diligently editing. Hope you like this chapter! The chapter title is from the song "Cancer" by Twenty-One Pilots  
**


	10. A Butcher With a Smile

_"_ _Be sober, be vigilant;_

 _Because your adversary the Devil, as a roaring lion,_

 _Walketh about, seeking whom he may devour."_

 _-1 Peter 5:8_

-Ω-

Today would be the day that people died, but they certainly didn't know that.

"The bodies of three soldiers were recovered today after many weeks of searching," boomed a newscaster from the TVs of every home. "Two looked as if they'd been attacked by rabid dogs, while the third suffered from Beelzebub's Print, the first new case since the Northeast fell to the sickness. The military is leaning toward terrorist attacks, though, because the bodies were found hastily buried, almost visible from the rain cleaning them off earlier. People are cautioned to keep a close eye on their children and their family members, especially those living in areas near the Northeast…"

Families were packing up and leaving, off to go live with family out west or farther south, not wanting to be any closer to the site than they had to be, and cars inched along the road, traffic bumper to bumper as everyone scrambled to leave. This particular town was one of the closest towns to the Northeast that hadn't been evacuated, and along the northern border of it, soldiers patrolled to make sure no stupid kids tried to sneak out, risking bringing back Beelzebub's Print when they returned.

Frank and Percy had known that they would be hitting civilization eventually, and they'd made sure to raid as many houses as possible to clean themselves up and look like regular teens rather than harbingers of the Apocalypse. They'd stolen clothes and taken showers in the houses that still had running water, and discarded of most of their supplies. They'd also robbed a ton of people's homes, digging up hidden safes full of cash and taking valuable-looking items to take to the pawn shop.

"I hate to leave these," Frank murmured as he produced the assault rifles from one of the bags and placed it down onto the table. If residents of these suburbs were ever allowed to return home, these people would find themselves equipped with some pretty heavy artillery. They left most of their weapons, and the only reason that they didn't leave all of them was because Frank refused to part with his spiked baseball bat.

"Her name is Gray," Frank snapped when Percy demanded that he leave the bat on the table with everything else. "I'm still deciding whether it's a he or a she, but all I know is that she's my child, even if she's only just the Great Value version of Lucille from _The Walking Dead_."

"Out of all the weapons you had to fall in love with, why did you have to get attached to that one?" Percy scoffed as Frank stuffed the bat back into a tote bag, burying it under heaps of extra clothing. "It's the most conspicuous out of all of them; some people own assault rifles, so I guess that's a bit normal in America, but no people but criminals have spiked fucking baseball bats."

"Shh, you'll hurt her feelings."

They set off again, with fresh clothes and clean bodies for the first time in months, and cut down a lot on the supplies, abandoning their matches, their rope, their sleeping bags, and their blankets to cut down on the load- they could suck it up sleeping on moth-eaten covers for a while before they could get to civilization and actually rent a motel room.

"I'll miss this," Frank admitted one night as he stared up at the ceiling of a kid's room, wrinkling his nose a bit at the loud pink wallpaper. Moonlight filtered through the window, casting squares of blue-white light onto the fuzzy carpet. "I-I'm not excited to see people, because I know that I'll eventually have to kill them. It'll make me sad if I see them and I talk to them, and then once we meet up with the others and I find my horse, it'll be over."

"Try not to dwell on that," Percy suggested, pulling the covers over his shoulders. "But I'm mostly scared about Blackjack. People will call animal control once they see him."

"So tell him to go around and meet us back out on the road west. I think we've gone south enough," Frank told him, and Percy was silent, his thinking almost tangible as the gears whirred in his head.

"I think I have an idea on how we can get everyone out of our way so we can travel in peace."

-Ω-

Rachel Elizabeth Dare was in desperate need of coffee, and everyone around her seemed to know it. Her messenger bag slung over one shoulder and her jeans still splattered with paint from the studio, she trudged down the street with her destination set at the local Starbucks. People seemed to part for her as she passed, noting the bags under her eyes and the shuffle in her walk, and Rachel was completely fine with it as long as she was able to get where she was going.

It never really got that cold in this town, but today was slightly chillier than usual, the cool breezes flushing Rachel's nose and cheeks red, and she'd even seen it necessary to slip on a windbreaker to keep warm. Stores lined the part of the sidewalk to her right, some of them open, most not.

 _Waiting until this whole thing blows over!_ read one sign for a restaurant, whose windows were boarded up and whose door was tightly closed. Rachel looked around to find that many people walking had suitcases with them, their expressions grim as they stared down at their phones and toted their luggage with them.

Some people carried newspapers, and every single one of them had a front page emblazoned with the words:

 **THREE MISSING SOLDIERS FOUND DEAD WHILE STATIONED IN THE NORTHEAST: TWO MAULED AND ONE HAVING CONTRACTED BEELZEBUB'S PRINT.**

 _Possible link to the murder of three students in Texas?_ one newspaper asked.

 _Terrorists still out there?_ another wondered.

 _Nobody is safe!_ a third declared.

People were leaving town; this news scared them out of their wits, as it should, but what really drove the point home was the fact that they lived in one of towns closest to the Northeast that hadn't been evacuated. Rachel's family members were more stubborn than mules, but everyone else actually had a sense of self-preservation and were packing their things and going off to live with relatives for the time being.

Taxis and Ubers and a whole host of other things crowded the street, holding up traffic as the passengers loaded their things into them, and Rachel couldn't help but feel a sense of dread. Could this be the end? Could this be the batch of terrorists that takes down America?

Dogs strained against their leashes, jumpy and sensing the tension, and police officers were stationed at every corner to make sure that the evacuation remained calm and peaceful.

Rachel squeezed through the tightly packed cars to cross the street, and ducked into the Starbucks, which was still going strong despite the clear lack of customers that was coming in and out. If everyone left and Rachel was the only person left, the Starbucks could count on her to keep coming in daily. She was so absorbed with her thoughts that she almost didn't notice the fact that there were other people in the Starbucks, which was a rarity now-a-days.

As she ordered her caramel Frappuccino, she decided that these two boys were just stopping for a bite to eat in the mad dash out of town, and in no way had come from home, because that would've been a bit ridiculous.

She pulled out her phone and took a seat in the booth behind the boys', checking Tumblr and trying to ignore all of the posts popping up on her dash about the terrorist attacks.

 _I was evacuated from my home because of Beelzebub's Print! Nowhere else to go! Please help!_

 _Captioned gifs covering the news stories about the latest discovery of the three missing soldiers._

 _Pictures of Annabeth Chase with empowering quotes about women underneath._

 _Long posts to honor Grover and Juniper, as well as their love for nature._

 _People panicking about the murder of the three teens in Houston._

She pursed her lips and swiped away the app, running her hands through her hair and wishing for this to end. All of her friends had left, and her classes at NYU had, unsurprisingly, ceased once Beelzebub's Print hit. She was stranded here, and there was no amount of sweet-talking that could get her parents to abandon the family mansion and get the hell out.

"…the Apocalypse."

Rachel's eyes narrowed as she picked up the last snippet of the boys' conversation. Judging from the deep baritone of it, it had come from the beefy Asian guy.

"You'll be fine. The first step of being a Horseman is to have fun and be yourself," the green-eyed boy replied cheerfully, and when Rachel turned subtly to regard them, she saw that he was munching away on a blueberry muffin.

"I can't be myself. My self doesn't kill people."

Rachel's heart stopped in her chest, and her grip tightened on her coffee, her nails digging indents into the Styrofoam.

"It will soon," the green-eyed boy replied. "Once we find your horse and meet up with the others, you'll be fine, I promise."

"I'm not sure about that. Did you see the article about the three students in Houston? Do you think that was them?" the Asian kid asked nervously, drumming his fingers onto the table.

"Absolutely, and they're not fucking around," the green-eyed boy replied firmly. "They're doing the jobs that were assigned to them."

With trembling fingers, Rachel pulled up the phone app. She was just about to dial 911 when an all too familiar voice asked, "Are you alright, miss? You're breathing pretty hard." She turned to find both of the boys staring at her, their eyes zeroed in on her face and their expressions schooled.

"I-I-I'm fine," she stammered, turning back to her phone, but the boys didn't seem to want to take that for an answer. They slid in on the booth across from her, and she clenched her jaw. If she had to beat these guys senseless, she would, but there was something about them that wasn't right. Something about their eyes.

"You sure you're okay? You seem a little panicked," the Asian guy grunted.

"It's alright. I'm okay. You can go back to your own table now." Rachel tried for a smile, but it probably looked more like a grimace, because the Asian guy frowned, exchanging a look with his friend.

"Is it because of the terrorist attacks?" the green-eyed boy asked, his brows knitting. "Are you scared? Do you need help?"

"I can handle myself on my own, thank you very much," Rachel snapped, and the boys seemed taken aback. The Asian guy's bicep flexed, and Rachel swore he was clenching his fists under the table. Her heart jackhammered in her chest even faster, and her fingers had almost gone through the Styrofoam of her cup. "Now please, go away." The green-eyed boy raised his hands in surrender, but the Asian guy was still bristling, his face contorting into something that wasn't entirely human.

"Come on, Frank," the green-eyed boy insisted, shoving at his beefy friend and forcing him to rise to his feet. "Frank, calm down. What's the matter?"

"Nothing, Percy, I'm fine," the Asian guy, Frank, murmured, trudging back to the booth.

Then Percy made a mistake.

"Sometimes you just have to lay off of people, dude." It was a harmless comment, meant to be a joke, but that must've been Frank's breaking point. The boy let out an inhuman bellow that scared Rachel out of her skin, and with one hand he grabbed Percy by the neck, raised him into the air, and tossed him across the room.

Rachel was dialing 911 in no time.

"911 what is your emergency?"

"Yes, this is Rachel Elizabeth Dare and I'm at the local Starbucks-" Frank roared again and suddenly the two baristas were screaming as well, tearing at each other with their fingernails. Rachel thought she might throw up as they began to tear chunks of flesh off of each other with their teeth, glimpses of bone starting to gleam in the light. "There's a fight breaking out, and I think that there are terrorists here-"

People on the streets had begun to notice, and a few heroic bystanders barged into the store, running at Frank and clawing at the man's shirt to try and get him off Percy, whose face Frank was trying to rearrange with his fists. The boy was hardly fazed, and threw the people off as if they were ragdolls. One of the baristas had ripped her coworker's throat out, and he lay dead on the floor as she began to dig in, tearing at the soft flesh of his stomach and eating his flesh raw.

Rachel vomited right then and there, the acid burning in her throat as more people streamed in, including cops. Once they locked eyes with Frank, though, they began to attack each other, and eventually the Starbucks was brimming with people tearing each other apart, blood and bodies beginning to slick the floor.

This was it. This was the end.

Tears were streaming down her face, and her phone had dropped onto the floor during the frenzy, trampled by the writhing mass of people-but-not-really people. She was pretty sure she heard a horse whinnying outside.

"Percy?" she heard off to her right, and she whirled to see that Frank and Percy had reconciled and were now standing side by side, watching the chaos unfold. Frank's eyes burned a blood red, and his face was contorted with an emotion that Rachel could only describe as sick amusement. She felt bile rising up in her throat as Percy's broken jaw corrected itself right in front of her eyes, the bruises blossoming over his face fading.

"Yes, Frank?"

"I think I know how to clear out towns so we don't see anyone on our travels."

Rachel let out a broken sob, and both boys turned to her simultaneously, their expressions serene despite the bloodbath going on not two feet away.

"And here's the girl who started it all. The one that just couldn't keep her mouth shut," Percy growled, and suddenly there was a hand clamping down on her wrist, the fingers gripping so tightly that she thought her hand would come right off.

She was dead on the ground before she could even draw breath to scream.

-Ω-

 **(A/N) Hello everyone! I'm so sorry for killing off all your favorite characters! (Ha not really)**

 **PLEASE REVIEW IT MAKES MY DAY WHENEVER I SEE IN MY INBOX THAT SOMEONE REVIEW**

 **The chapter title is from the song "Tear in My Heart" by Twenty One Pilots**


	11. Sometimes Wish Id Never Been Born at All

_"_ _And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons_

 _And the flesh of their daughters._

 _And all shall eat the flesh of their neighbors in the siege,_

 _And in the distress with which their enemies_

 _And those who seek their life afflict them."_

 _-Jeramiah 19:9_

-Ω-

It was a bright, jovial morning, and even though there were imminent threats looming to the east, the people of Utah still continued about their day without a care in the world. The streets of the town were crammed with cars, the sidewalks bustling with people who were enjoying the early spring weather, and business was booming for the local shops, who had an influx of customers as people from the East moved to house with family temporarily.

There was a problem, though, and it could only be noticed by long-time residents in the town who were really paying attention. If the chatter of pedestrians and the chorus of car engines rumbling was taken away, one would suddenly realize that the natural world was silent. There were no birds singing, and the wind had stopped, leaving the normally rustling leaves as still as stone. Then, one would probably notice the sound of hooves against concrete.

Clip-clop.

Clip-clop.

Clip-clop.

Once the rest of the sound was added back in, the staccato one-two one-two of the hoof beats was lost, drowned out by the sound of civilization, but the birds and the squirrels and the trees knew those hoof beats, had had the sound of them ingrained into their very being without their knowledge, and all that they knew was that it meant danger.

Far from the clamor of oblivious people, two horses picked their way down a nearly abandoned side street. There was one black horse, whose bones jut out against its hide as if trying to escape from the equine's skin, and one pale horse, who was a very light tan, almost stark white but not entirely, and their riders sat regally upon their backs, staring straight ahead and not even batting an eyelash at the scattered amount of people that were filming them.

A mousy-haired girl followed them from a distance, holding up her phone and not really believing what her eyes were seeing, and the two horsemen turned a corner, disappearing from sight. She jogged a bit to catch up, but when she peered down the next street, she found that they were gone.

She wondered if she'd imagined them, and when she looked down at her phone to try and play back the video, it was nowhere to be found.

A while later, two boys stepped into a motel lobby. They were a bit bedraggled, but the motel owner didn't really think much of it; perhaps they were two college students or two friends taking a cross-country trip. A lot of those came through here, and he handed them two keys once they'd paid for a one night stay.

The shorter one with the dark hair slid the owner two crisp twenties. "If you let us keep the horses outside." The burly man peered over their shoulders and out the grimy window to find two stallions waiting patiently on the small lawn that was by the parking lot, and he shrugged before snatching up the money and stuffing it into his pocket before nodding to the two teens. Horses didn't really do anything, and he'd get his grass trimmed, if anything. However, he couldn't help but feel weirded-out by the two boys as they slipped out of the lobby, and only later did he realize that he didn't hear their footsteps against the linoleum.

-Ω-

"Breaking news!" cried Hermes, who held his papers tightly in one hand and clutched his earpiece with the other. Words zoomed across the bottom of the screen, almost faster than anyone could comprehend. "It's been revealed that the government suspects the terrorists are moving west, following a string of Beelzebub's Print outbreaks that wiped out entire towns and left thousands dead."

"We think that wherever the terrorists go, Beelzebub's Print will follow," states the head of the FBI, James Comey. "Their conspicuousness will cost them dearly. They seem to be making their way over to California, and we've deployed military units in order to block their path before they can get very far."

"As of now, fifteen towns have been completely wiped off the map," Hermes spewed as more information rolled in on his earpiece. "The death toll is adding up, and is currently breaching the thousands as more bodies are uncovered. Among the dead are men, women, children, and even infants. Whoever these terrorists are, they are taking no prisoners. We hand this over to Iris, who's currently stationed on the outskirts of one of the first towns to fall to the Print after the huge outbreak in the Northeast."

"Thank you, Hermes. This devastating event came only a year after the original outbreak, and the police are suspecting that-"

The blonde boy smashed the power button on the remote with more vigor than necessary, and the newscasters were effectively silenced as the screen succumbed to black. Scowling, the boy sat up a little straighter in his motel bed, the comforters scrunching as he held them in a white-knuckled grip.

"They're too conspicuous," he snapped to his dark-haired companion, who'd made himself comfortable on the second bed and was absorbed in a battered old Bible. "They're going to lead the authorities right to us, and that'll get messy." He didn't seem the slightest bit concerned about the prospect of having the FBI kicking down his door, but rather aggravated that he'd have to deal with them.

"Let them do what they want to do," the dark-haired boy replied as his eyes scanned the yellowed pages and the grainy print. He was in the middle of Revelations, by the looks of it. "They're the first two, so you can't blame them for being a bit wild."

"Yes, but these kinds of things are supposed to be reserved for _after_ we unite," the blonde complained, running a hand through his hair and chewing on his lip. The potted plant in the corner, which hadn't been doing very well in the first place, withered into a husk. "They're going against Zeus's wishes."

"Stop being so uptight," the dark-haired boy chided, snapping the Bible closed and tossing it onto the rickety end table. "At least we'll know where to find them."

"If they don't get slowed down by law enforcement first," the blonde pointed out. "They're going to have to progress slower if they're making every single headline."

"You can't really tell them what to do. I mean, Pestilence is pretty mild overall, but I think it's War that's making him so unhinged. That guy's aura will make even the most peaceful of Buddhist monks bloodthirsty to all hell," his companion told him simply, drumming his fingers on the moth-eaten sheets. "You think he's found his horse yet?"

"I doubt it. Otherwise we'd already be out there bringing the Apocalypse."

"Why are all my plants dying?!" the husky voice of the motel owner bellowed from somewhere nearby, followed by the shocked murmuring of the guests. "It must be these damn horses!" The two boys had already paid him off so he would allow their horses to be nearby, and they knew that he wouldn't send the steeds off.

"You know, Jason, you're still a human," the dark-haired boy murmured softly. "At least, until we meet up with Pestilence and War. The mission doesn't have to be the only thing on your mind at all times."

"That's what you think," the blonde, Jason, snapped. "But I'm pretty sure a human doesn't make plants wilt and food rot when he touches them. And I'm also pretty sure that a human, you know, has to fucking eat."

"Think of those as little bumps in the road," the dark-haired boy suggested calmly, and Jason bristled, his pupil consuming his entire eye and turning them jet black.

"I feel like I'm starving to death every waking moment, Nico!" Jason bellowed, and outside the trees across the street began to die, the flowers wilting and the bushes going bare. "But I don't die. And when I try to eat, the food disintegrates in my hands. That's not human!"

"Fine, believe what you want," Nico stated simply snatching his Bible back up, and Jason's lips peeled back into an ugly sneer. His black, bottomless eyes blazed with fury, but Nico's even temper was always able to calm him down somewhat. "But remember, no matter what we do, we're still humans in the end."

A mouse scuttled across the floor, and Nico glared at it, watching as it froze up and slumped, dead.

-Ω-

Who knew killing people could be so fun? Frank sure was having a ball, and despite the fact that there was a little part of himself that was screaming for him to stop- the part of him that had begun to grow weaker the moment he'd laid his eyes on Percy at the hospital- he continued on without a care in the world. Percy and Blackjack were his constant companions, both whom he cared for dearly, and the three of them soldiered west in search of Famine and Death.

He'd stopped trying to hide his baseball bat long ago, and now he strolled alongside Blackjack with it slung over his shoulder, the spikes dangerously close to his head. He'd saved and cherished the black leather jacket that he'd taken from the dead blond guy back in the Northeast, and even though Percy mocked him constantly and kept making those jokes about him being a discount Negan, Frank really liked the look.

Percy had pawned off the blond dead guy's white-and-red striped scarf a long time ago, and now was decked in ratty jeans and a loud, disgusting orange T-shirt from Goodwill that said "Camp Half-Blood" with a picture of a pegasus on it. Frank was revolted by it, but Percy found it charming for some reason, which Frank didn't understand: why would he be so infatuated with someone's hand-me-down camp T-shirt? Despite all they'd been through, Percy never ceased to be perplexing.

The two of them whistled as they picked their way down an abandoned stretch of road. They were somewhere in the Tennessee-Arkansas area and had busted up a few towns along the way, with Percy giving one person the Print as they entered town and the two of them leaving as it spread like wildfire. It was a nice, quick, effective, and easy way to massacre hundreds of people.

"When do you think I'll find my horse?" Frank asked, and Percy leaned back on Blackjack, rubbing his chin and considering it for a few moments.

"No idea," the green-eyed boy decided. "But I think you'll know."

"You sound like a mother telling her daughter how to decide whether her boyfriend is the One."

"I try my best."

"Did you name Blackjack or did he come with the name?" Frank inquired, patting the horse in question's hide. The gelding tossed his head and snorted, his ears rotating as his sightless eyes stared straight ahead.

"He came with it, but I think it's nice," Percy admitted, ruffling Blackjack's already messy name and crooning mushy lovey things into his ears.

"I want to know what kind of drugs someone has to be on to name a white horse Blackjack," Frank chuckled, drumming his fingers on the handle of his bat and grinning.

"All of the drugs," Percy told him matter-of-factly, and the two broke into uproarious laughter. Blackjack's ears pricked and he let out a nicker, his tail lashing back and forth.

"Blackjack says there's a car coming," Percy translated, and he steered the white horse off of the road and into the cover of the trees. Frank crouched down into the brush and tried to get his eyes to adjust to the darkness, the foliage from the trees blotting out the light from the moon that he'd been using to see by. Eventually, the rumble of an engine could be heard, faint but growing progressively louder. Blackjack let out a soft whine, but Percy shushed him, rubbing the horse's neck in an attempt to comfort. The gelding's white coat stood out like a sore thumb among the blackness of the trees, but they were deep enough into the woods that it would be out of sight for the people on the road.

A huge black SUV came into sight, and Frank's breath hitched as he realized it was crawling down the road, its headlights blazing and its windows tinted. Its passengers seemed to be looking for something, perhaps drugged up teens or members of the KKK or radicalized Muslims, and Frank crouched lower into the brush as the black paint glinted in the light of the moon, watching with baited breath as it slowly continued on. He, Percy, and Blackjack stayed in place until the rumbling of its engine faded into the distance.

"That was close," Percy whispered. "This manhunt is really stepping up a notch. I'd hate to confront a patrol; these clothes are new and I don't need blood getting on them."

-Ω-

 **(A/N) Sorry about the long update, I've been consumed with the school play, a whole bunch of homework and projects, and editing my novel. Get ready for the next chapter, because there's going to be a new addition to the team if it goes how I want it to.**

 **PLEASE REVIEW IT MAKES ME HAPPY I LOVE YOU ALL.**

 **The chapter title is from the song Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen.**


	12. We'd Rather Die Than Do It Your Way

_"_ _And He shall judge among the nations and shall rebuke many people:_

 _And they shall beat their swords into plowshares,_

 _And their spears into pruning hooks:_

 _Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,_

 _Neither shall they learn war anymore."_

 _-Isaiah 2:4_

-Ω-

The Oklahoma day was hot and humid, and Frank wasn't enjoying it in the slightest. Sure, it was better that there wasn't any winter or cold that they had to worry about, but hot days and walking 24/7 weren't high on his list of things he liked. He'd already turned three T-shirts into disgusting sweaty messes, and eventually opted just not to wear a shirt at all. Considering his incredibly muscular physique (seriously, since when did he get a six pack?), the Oklahomans weren't at all upset by this.

Percy seemed a bit uncomfortable in the heat as well, the skin on his nose peeling and the tops of his ears sunburned from being exposed out on Blackjack's back, and it didn't help that he was forced to wear wrist-high gloves. This was partially because he needed to hide Beelzebub's Print and partially because he accidentally killed a cashier in Taco Bell while he was getting his change back. That had forced them to slaughter the whole town and then move on faster than they would have liked, fully aware of the growing amount of patrols that were beginning to prowl the highways in search of the terrorists.

Now they were passing through a small town, and its inhabitants gawked at Blackjack and the boys that accompanied him. The trio tried to keep to the shade, but the heat was inescapable, permeating everything it came into contact with.

"I think I might kill myself," Percy groaned, leaning against Blackjack's neck. The horse was the only one who didn't seem at all affected by the blistering day. "My hands are so damn sweaty."

"Wait until we get back to the highway," Frank told him, his baseball bat hanging at his side. People passed them without even batting an eyelash at the serrated weapon; next to Percy and the horse, Frank looked like he was cosplaying rather than actually carrying a weapon. "When there's no one around."

Percy frowned as people snapped pictures of him from across the street, shaking his head.

"If they keep posting pics of us on social media, the Feds might be able to trace the attacks back to us; we come through town right before the attacks."

"I don't think they're posting anything," Frank responded, gesturing with his chin at a pudgy woman holding up an expensive-looking camera to her eye. She snapped a few pictures, the shutter clicking, but when she looked down at her camera, she frowned, her brows knitting, and tried snapping a few more. "The pictures aren't showing up."

"How convenient."

They passed through the town without incident, and on the way Frank snatched a newspaper from the nearby stationery store, checking the date and chuckling at all of the articles that were centered on the "terrorist attacks". As soon as Frank was sure that there weren't any prying eyes watching, he allowed Percy to shed his gloves, which the green-eyed boy was beyond grateful for.

"I thought I was going to die of heat stroke," he snapped as they walked along, rubbing circles into Blackjack's hide, which the gelding seemed to be enjoying immensely. What little trees Oklahoma had were skimpy; the few that they passed offering little to no shade, and all that left them with were bushes and grass. They'd purchased a fuck ton of sunscreen and had been applying it liberally, but they still got sunburned as the sun bore down on them.

"I don't think you can die of heatstroke if it's just your hands that are covered."

"Since when did you become an expert on heat stroke?"

"Since now."

Percy rolled his eyes and maneuvered himself on Blackjack's back so that he could take his shoes and socks off without falling and cracking his head open on asphalt.

"Finally, my feet can breathe," he sighed, wiggling his toes and stuffing his shoes and socks into one of the bags that was draped over Blackjack's back.

"I can smell them from here," Frank groaned, crinkling his nose, but he was slightly jealous of Percy; the road was too hot and the land around it was too rocky to forsake shoes, and he could feel his feet blistering within the confines of his boots.

Percy was so lucky that he had a horse to carry him everywhere, and for the rest of the day he stewed in his own juices, grumbling to himself and causing the nearby wildlife to quarrel with each other. He wasn't mad enough to make them tear one another apart, but a low-lying blanket of annoyance simmered just below the surface.

Eventually, night fell, finally freeing Percy and Frank of the deadly heat of the daytime. As the sun set to the west, the sky was painted with an array of reds, yellows, and oranges, tinged at the edges by purple as the Earth was slowly overtaken by darkness. As dusk retreated and was replaced with night, a sprawling navy sky that was spangled with stars was revealed, and it was, needless to say, awe-inspiring. It was beautiful, and the trio actually stopped to stare at the clusters of white pinpoints, all of which were just glowing balls of gas that were millions of light years away. It made Frank feel small, knowing how big the universe was, and how he was just a speck of dust on a huge tapestry of galaxies that was almost infinite in size.

At about ten in the evening, they reached a dingy motel that had to be miles away from any sort of civilization. An old, weathered pickup was parked out front, along with a sleek motorcycle and a battered truck, and Percy slid off of Blackjack's back, taking their stuff with him. He patted the horse's haunch and let him wander off to be left to his own devices. There was miles of absolute nothing around, and horses loved nothing, especially when that nothing had grass.

Percy handed off their bags to Frank and slipped inside the main building to pay for a room, and while he was gone, Frank watched Blackjack's form grow smaller and smaller until his bleached white hide was out of sight. He knew the horse would find his way back, no matter what the terrain and no matter how blind he was, and Frank couldn't help but envy that. He was supposed to have a horse like Percy, but because the man in charge couldn't communicate with Frank for some reason, he had to scour the country in search of it. How unfair was that?

Their motel room was just as disgusting as all of the other ones they'd stayed in, the carpets grimy and the white-tiled bathroom having yellowed from age. Though the sheets looked clean, Frank certainly didn't want to see them under a black light, and the shower he took was miserable to say the least. He even went so far as to air dry, because there was no fucking way he was letting one of those towels touch his naked body; he could probably get ten kinds of herpes from that.

Percy had long since fallen asleep by the time Frank stepped out of the bathroom, and Frank felt like he'd been hit by a dump truck several times, his body aching all over as he collapsed onto the mattress which, no matter how lumpy, creaky, and uncomfortable, was still better than standing up. He pulled the scratchy sheets over his shoulders and stared into the dark for a while, watching the light reflect off of all the sharp objects protruding from his baseball bat, which lay forlornly on a rickety table nearby.

When he was finally able to fall asleep, Frank dreamt of a crimson horse carrying him across a battlefield. War raged around them, bullets shredding the air and smoke pluming, but nothing touched them as they flew along. Once they were out of danger, the horse turned and spoke to Frank, his voice startlingly familiar:

 _"_ _When you and your bud get back onto the road, walk for two miles and then turn south. I'll be waiting."_

-Ω-

"Percy?"

"Yeah?"

"Did Blackjack come to you in your dreams before he actually came to you?"

They'd just gotten back onto the road, refreshed and ready to go, and the day was, thankfully, milder than the one before; they no longer felt as if they were going to melt into the pavement at any moment. Blackjack had been waiting outside of their door once they were ready.

Percy turned to Frank, frowning. "No, I don't believe so. Why?"

Frank shrugged noncommittedly, considering lying and telling Percy that he was just curious, but decided that it would be more detrimental to withhold the information, "I had a dream about a horse the other day. A red one. It told me in a man's voice that I had to walk for two more miles and then turn south."

"Why didn't you tell me this the moment I woke up?" Percy demanded. "That's a huge deal! Haven't we been looking for your horse all along?"

"I thought we were supposed to meet up with the others and then find my horse."

"You clearly don't have your priorities straight," Percy scoffed, but his eyes were sparkling. "If you get your horse, we can find the others sooner and we can complete the job that was given to us faster."

"Yeah, I know," Frank mumbled, swinging his bat lazily back and forth in time with his steps. He kept his gaze on the ground. "I guess that's good."

"You're not excited?" Percy prompted, his eyebrows climbing up to his hairline.

"Well, it's kind of hard to be excited when you're going to be killing innocent people. Men. Women. Children."

"I thought you were past feeling guilty."

"Clearly not. If I don't think about it, I'm fine with it happening, but I get all nervous and my throat gets clogged whenever I linger on it too much," Frank admitted, a bead of sweat dribbling down his temple. "It's just…I would feel better knowing I was killing bad people, you know? Like some sort of vigilante rather than a terrorist."

"All of these people's souls are going to Purgatory to be judged on whether they're being sent to Heaven or Hell," Percy pointed out. "So unless you have a super special weapon or some shit, you're not really killing them."

"Yeah but they can still feel pain. I'm going to make parents eat their children, brothers tear their sisters to shreds, and people smash their infants' heads onto rocks…"

"It's already done. You've made those things happen to plenty of towns before."

"Yeah, but there are still towns left to go to. What happens when everyone's dead and it's just the four of us alone amongst piles of rotting corpses?"

"Zeus has promised to raise us up and join our families in Heaven," Percy replied firmly, a smile slowly spreading across his face, as if he were longing and hoping for the day to finally come when it was just the Four Horsemen, alone and left in the dying world. "We'll be rewarded."

"After what we did?" Frank scoffed, scowling and twirling his bat. "Killing all those people means us going to Heaven?"

"That's what he said," Percy replied, shrugging and seeming not at all concerned, which was very worrying on Frank's part.

"Some things aren't adding up," he grunted, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth and drumming his fingers on his thigh. "I don't like it."

"We have to trust," Percy chided, patting Blackjack on the neck, and the horse nickered an agreement. "After all, he is…God. He can't be wrong, can he?"

Frank was just about to retort when suddenly a deep, husky voice reached the survivor's ears.

 _"_ _Hey, kid. You're gonna miss the turn."_

"What?" Frank asked aloud, turning to find Percy giving him an odd look. Only then did he realize that the voice was inside of his head.

 _"_ _Turn now. To your right. No, actually, to your left. Your left, my right."_

Without an ounce of hesitation, Frank turned left and began picking his way through the clusters of bushes as asphalt bled into brittle dirt.

"Frank, what is it?"

"The voice," Frank replied helpfully, soldiering onward despite the fact that the bushes' branches scraped at his calves, which were exposed by the lacrosse shorts he was wearing. "It's the same one that belonged to the horse in my dream." Percy was on his tail in no time, and Blackjack's excitement spurred Frank on: the horse was very jittery, his ears rotating this way and that as he gave little hops of excitement.

They walked for what felt like hours, until the highway disappeared from sight. There was nothing out here, though, except for shrubbery and the occasional, scraggly tree.

 _"_ _Don't be discouraged by the scenery. Keep walking,"_ the voice ordered, and Frank's heart began to pound as something began to make his fingers tingle and his blood leap through his veins. The more his walked, the stronger the feeling got.

Blackjack let out a whinny and stamped his feet, tossing his head as a smudge of crimson appeared in the horizon, silhouetted against the blue of the sky, growing bigger and bigger as they approached.

Frank let out a ragged breath as the smudge took an equine shape, and eventually the details became sharper. The horse was beautiful, built like a Clydesdale, and its coat was the color of freshly fallen blood, its eyes glowing white.

 _"_ _Hey there, kid,"_ the horse snorted, pawing at the ground a bit. He turned to Blackjack, eying him critically before saying, _"We'll make a good team."_

"Oh my god," Percy whispered, grinning delightedly as Frank slowly approached the huge horse, which towered a good foot and a half above Blackjack. Despite his smooth words, though, the stallion was still clearly weary, his ears pricked and his nostrils flared. All of his thick, corded muscles were tense, braced to run away at a moment's notice.

"Are you…my horse?" Frank asked, meaning to sound headstrong, but his voice came out hesitant and timid. This beast could easily trample him and, Frank realized as the horse yawned and revealed wicked incisors, eat him as well.

 _"_ _Who else's horse could I be?"_ the stallion prompted, seeming smug. _"Besides, I am communicating with you, aren't I?"_

"I suppose so," Frank grunted, slinging his bat over his shoulder and watching as the horse eyed it warily. "What's your name?" The horse's mouth contorted into a monstrous grin.

 _"_ _Ares."_

Frank felt like he was going to vomit, his hands beginning to shake.

"Ares?" he choked out. His father had left when he was young, and he barely remembered the man's voice, but he'd known him for long enough to recognize it. Now he was embodied in the horse that would carry Frank over the battlefield, like he's seen in his dream.

 _"_ _Ah, so you haven't forgotten."_

"No, I most certainly haven't," Frank whispered harshly. "Why are you here?"

 _"_ _Zeus sent me."_

"Yes, I get that, but why did it have to be you? Percy didn't know Blackjack. Why did it have to be you who came down as…" he waved his hand around. "This."

 _"_ _I volunteered. I wanted to see m'boy again."_

"That wouldn't've been a problem if you hadn't left my mom." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Percy paling.

"You know him already?" the green-eyed boy squeaked.

"Unfortunately," Frank ground out, his fists clenching. Nearby, a mouse screamed as its offspring ripped open her chest cavity.

 _"_ _What do you mean 'unfortunately'? I thought you'd be glad to see me again. Get to know me."_ Ares chuckled darkly. _"I am a very handsome steed, you know."_

"I wasn't supposed to meet you like this!" Frank shouted, and Ares balked a bit, tossing his head as his ears pinned. Frank softened a bit, feeling drained. "It wasn't supposed to be like this." Ares snorted, his tail swishing.

 _"_ _Fate is cruel, I suppose,"_ he grunted.

"You have no idea."

-Ω-

 **(A/N) PLEASE REVIEW YOUR THOUGHTS, THEY MAKE MY DAY! I'm so sorry for the long update. I've been busy with schoolwork and editing my novel manuscript and shoveling ALL THIS FUCKING SNOW. I hate winter.**

 **The chapter title is from Imagine Dragons' song "Ready, Aim, Fire"**


	13. And All These Sorrows I Have Seen

_"_ _Cry aloud, spare not! Lift up thy voice like a trumpet,_

 _And show my people their transgressions!"_

 _-Isaiah 58:1_

-Ω-

Frank was ready to give this world hell.

He and Percy galloped through fields and burst through forests like two unstoppable tornados, leaving nothing but carnage in their wake. The hooves of their steeds ate up the ground, and they traveled more in one night than they'd done in the past week.

Frank had never really been a fan of horseback riding, but as the wind whipped at his hair and Ares's muscles surged beneath him, his hooves barely touching the ground, he now understood the lure. His heart soared as they thundered down the line, and he felt like he was flying, a euphoria like nothing else leaping in his veins.

"So, do I call you Ares or…?" Frank's voice trailed off as they stopped for a water break by a secluded pond. They had a sizable stack of water bottles, from which Percy and Frank drank out of, but the horses preferred the pond water for some godforsaken reason.

 _"_ _Yes, Ares,"_ the red horse agreed, water dribbling from his lips. Frank was pretty sure there was a rule about not drinking from still water, but he knew that Ares wouldn't be affected by it. _"If you called me 'Dad' that would be a little weird. I am no longer your dad, I'm your steed."_ There was a pause as he dipped his head to take another drink. _"And just know that I…I'm proud of you."_

"Proud of me?"

 _"_ _Yes."_

"But why?" Frank demanded. "It's not like I'm a poster boy for a healthy lifestyle. I kill people."

 _"_ _And that's why it's good,"_ Ares chuckled, his ears swiveling. _"You know, there are a lot of brave soldiers out there- ones who genuinely want to serve our country, you know?"_ Frank nodded. "Well, I'm not one of them."

"What do you mean?" Frank asked, a divot appearing in his brow. "Before she died, my mom told me that you were a general. That you were respected."

 _"_ _I didn't tell people to respect me, kid,"_ Ares snorted, shaking his mane and pawing at the ground. _"The war…it was the only thing I cared about, not including you and your mother. I got high on the bloodlust and carnage of it, even went so far as to put myself out on the front lines, and you can see where that got me."_

There was a pause.

"Ares?" Frank murmured.

 _"_ _Yeah?"_

"Do you ever miss mom?"

 _"_ _More than you know."_

-Ω-

It was no less difficult to track the other Horsemen, even now that they had Ares at their disposal. No matter how far they galloped, or how much they sat and watched the news at the nasty-ass motels they crashed at, Frank and Percy had absolutely no luck in finding them.

"What if they're back out East?" Frank fretted one night as soon as they'd turned off the lights. "What if they went out East looking for us and we're just getting farther and farther away?"

"I doubt that. We're leaving a trail of killings in our wake. Like breadcrumbs," Percy assured, thumbing at the itchy floral covers absently. "They're smart. I'm pretty sure they'll be able to track us."

"Okay," was his only reply before the conversation fell to the reign of silence.

Percy could faintly make out the lumpy outline of Frank through the darkness, and for a few moments he just stared at his companion's back, wondering what he was thinking. He'd been a bit rattled all day, ever since the conversation he'd had with Ares, and Percy dearly wished that he could understand the red horse so he could somehow manage to piece together why Frank was so jumpy. Vaguely, the first Horseman wondered what his colleague was thinking.

Was he upset?

Lonely?

Guilty?

Percy felt a bit bad for the guy. Before everything, he'd just been a normal dude, and he'd really taken this whole Horseman thing a lot harder than Percy had. Percy had been approached by Zeus himself, and sincerely believed that what they were doing was the right thing; they were freeing people of this mortal world, sending the good ones to paradise and the bad ones to eternal punishment. It was a win-win situation, but he knew that Frank had doubts.

When Frank was feeling like himself, he was timid and at times rueful of all of the things they were doing, and Percy felt crushing guilt when they stopped for a break right after slaughtering a town and Frank looked like he was trying to hold back tears.

But Frank was starting to become Not Frank, and the more that Not Frank reared his ugly head, the more Real Frank began to disappear, and the notion that Real Frank would leave altogether scared the living bejeezus out of Percy.

Not Frank was so much different than the guy who'd just wanted to lend a hand back in New York City, the one who'd taken in a sick patient despite the fact that he would be a huge burden and the one who'd told jokes while huddled at the fire. No, Not Frank was far from that, and he actually scared Percy a bit, not only due to the fact that he was incredibly violent, but also because he was emotionless.

Not Frank would chop a little girl's head from her shoulders without blinking.

Not Frank would sneer at Percy and pull away sharply when the green-eyed boy tried to put a hand on his arm and try to calm him down.

Not Frank was totally fine with the cards that he'd been dealt.

Not Frank was _excited_ about the job that they had to do.

Percy really wouldn't mind this so much had he not bore witness to the slow corruption of his companion- after all, these traits were expected of the second Horseman. But Frank Zhang- kind, compassionate, nervous, guilty Frank Zhang- wasn't built to feel this capacity of anger. Of hatred. It scared Percy to no end when he realized that eventually this Not Frank would become Real Frank. Real Frank wouldn't exist anymore.

He felt his heart grow heavy when he realized that the reason why Frank was growing so cold was because of him; the only reason Not Frank even existed was because Percy kept pressuring him into accepting his fate. Not Frank only appeared when Frank got angry, and the only reason that that happened was because Percy annoyed him to make sure that he killed everyone in the town. Not Frank stayed longer and longer after the slaughter had ended, and Percy knew that there would come a time when Not Frank would never leave.

Percy sighed, staring at his companion for a few moments more, but eventually had to look away. Knowing that he wouldn't be able to get to sleep anytime soon, he turned to stare out the window, were smeared with grime and almost opaque, but he could still see the shadowy silhouettes of the horses moving around, their ears pricked and their heads coming in and out of view as they moved to nibble at grass.

The motel smelled of cheap booze and sad sex, and Percy shifted around uncomfortably on his bed. For a few moments, he longed for the one in his room, which had been in the apartment that he and his mother had shared in the city, but that brought back an influx of bad memories and he quickly cleared his thoughts. His mind became a blank slate. He thought of nothing.

No Frank.

No mom.

No New York.

Just nothing.

-Ω-

"Jason."

"Hmm?"

"Jason, wake up."

"What?"

"I found them."

Jason was sitting bolt upright on his horse as soon as the words were uttered, his eyes wide open and any traces of sleep scattered to the wind. The night was dark and cool, with stars sparkling overhead like a glowing tapestry, and the waning light of the moon was almost completely obscured by the trees that loomed up on either side of the road.

 _"_ _Whoa, dude, don't get up to fast,"_ Tempest warned, his black coat rippling as he walked alongside Nico's horse, the one-two one-two of their hoof beats synchronized and precise. Though a bit too bony for Jason's liking, the blond-haired boy had to admit that Tempest did hold an air of regality to him, even though it was uncomfortable to be poked and jabbed during the ride. _"You'll get vertigo."_

Jason ignored him.

"What did you say?" he demanded, and Nico turned calmly to him, only the silhouette of his face visible in the starlight.

"I said I found them," Nico replied calmly, sitting back and rubbing his hand over his horse's flank. "In fact, Arion told me that he'd sensed the other two horses nearby for quite some time now."

Jason fumed a bit at this, rubbing his bare arms against the chill with more ferocity than necessary as he glared at his companion through the dark. It was during nights like these that Jason longed for when he'd had at least a little meat on his bones; he hadn't eaten so much as a crumb ever since he was Chosen, and his body had burned away any access fat long ago.

It was one of the things that made it a little easier for Jason to accept his fate; humans didn't live for years without food, and even if they did, they certainly wouldn't be able to walk and talk like Jason was doing. They wouldn't be able to move, really, but for some reason, Jason's body had kept his muscles intact, though barely. It was one of the reasons why Jason tried to work out so often; the bigger his muscles got, the more it compensated for his lack of fat in areas where it should be.

"And how come you didn't tell me this before?" he managed to splutter after a few moments of trying to work his throat and form words.

"You were asleep," Nico replied simply.

Jason was still trying to figure out whether Nico's temper actually existed. The black-haired boy he'd met all those months ago had told him that, before he'd been Chosen, he'd actually been quite hot-headed. Imagining Nico as hot-headed was near impossible at this point, because if there were any remnants of his temper, Jason couldn't make them out; the last Horseman was pretty cool-as-a-cucumber about everything, including things that most normal people should really get worked about.

Like riding your dead sister's horse-turned-magic, for instance.

"How did Arion know that they were close?" Jason inquired, running his fingers through his hair and staring up at the sky. The occasional shadow of a plane or a bird blotted the stars out, but they always returned, shining rust as brightly as ever.

"He can sense the death lingering on their coats."

"Can _you_ sense it?"

"Jason, there is so much death in this world that my senses are rendered absolutely useless. There is death everywhere, don't you realize that?" Nico shook his head, a small smile touching his features. "I'm lucky that Arion's ability to detect that sort of stuff is more…acute."

"Well, then what are we waiting around for?" Jason prompted. "Let him take us to them."

Before Jason could even blink, Arion was off like a shot. Tempest let out a shocked splutter before racing to catch up.

Now, Arion was one of the fastest creatures that Jason had ever seen, his pale buckskin coat rippling as the horse moved like fluid, and needless to say, Jason's emaciated black stallion had a difficult time keeping up. Tempest was completely fine running- it didn't hurt him or anything, since he was in the same boat as Jason was- and if he went up in a race against a normal horse, he would probably win against even the most talented of thoroughbreds. But when up against Arion, there was really no contest.

The trees blurred on either side of them as they thundered down the line, and they occasionally had to slip into the cover of trees as a car zipped by, but after riding for about a minute or so, Arion began to slow.

They were close to civilization, Jason realized; there were street lights that, though most were broken, cast weak pools of light along the cracked and faded asphalt of the road.

The biggest giveaway, though, was the shabby motel that loomed up before him. There was a garish neon sign depicting a scantily clad woman whose leg went up and down, the words "The Lucky Lady" emblazoned in pink beneath her.

The Y in "Lady" had gone out, so it now the sign read "The Lucky Lad", though it made sense either way.

"It's not much better than the places we've stayed at," Jason admitted, wrinkling his nose and frowning at the scanty sign and the near-crumbling motel rooms that curved around the building where the lobby was. "But still, they stayed here? Of all places?"

"Apparently," Nico pointed out, shrugging and gesturing with his chin over to the parking lot. Jason followed his gaze, and even though it was to be expected, he was still a bit startled when he saw two horses grazing by the motel room at the end. They weren't grazing so much as watching Nico and Jason warily.

One of them- a grungy, disgusting looking white gelding- wasn't even looking in the right direction, his head turned in the direction just to their right. At first, Jason wondered whether the horse simply wasn't interested, but then the light of the stars glinted off of his milky white eyes, and the blond realized with a jolt that the horse was blind.

"That's Pestilence's horse, right?" Jason asked Tempest, and the black horse shook his stringy mane.

" _He_ is _white_ ," the stallion pointed out.

"Yeah, but why?"

 _"_ _Oh my god, Jason, you can't just ask a horse why it's white."_

"I didn't mean it like that," Jason snapped. "I mean, why this particular horse. I mean, he's blind and looks like he has all sorts of diseases."

 _"_ _That makes it a perfect fit for Pestilence, now does it?"_

Jason couldn't argue with that as he and Nico trotted over to the white horse and its companion.

Now, Jason would never admit aloud that this other horse was one of the scariest creatures he had ever seen.

Its coat was the color of deoxygenated blood, dark enough that it almost blended in with the shadows, and its eyes were like chips of obsidians. As soon as Jason and Nico approached, its lips peeled back, revealing wickedly sharp incisors that certainly didn't belong in a horse's mouth.

"I'm assuming that's War's horse," Jason deadpanned as he slid off of Tempest's back, and the horse let out a soft whimper. "What's wrong?"

 _"_ _The dude- Ares- is threatening me,"_ Tempest warned. _"He says that if we make any wrong moves he'll rip our throats out."_

"Tell him we come in peace," Jason replied simply, thumbing at the knife that was safely tucked in his waistband. Though his words were cool and measured, he was secretly freaking out on the inside; Ares scared the living daylights out of him, and so did its companion (even though the white horse seemed quite friendly).

 _"_ _He can understand you just fine,"_ Tempest scoffed. _"And so can Blackjack."_

"But he's white."

 _"_ _Excuse me?"_

"Why is his name Blackjack if he's white?"

 _"_ _Do I really have to have this conversation with you again?"_

"Where are their riders?" Nico asked Arion, and the horse let out a low rumble, tossing his head and pawing at the ground. Blackjack let out an amiable nickering reply, tossing his head in the direction of one of the rooms.

"This way," Nico told Jason, gesturing for him to follow, and Jason felt his heart relocate into his throat as the two trekked across the worn blacktop. Their horses stayed behind, becoming acquainted with the others, and Jason felt exposed without his steed by his side.

This was happening.

He was finally going to meet Pestilence and War.

-Ω-

 **PLEASE REVIEW, IT MAKES MY DAY!**

 **Oh, and by the way, this is the second-to-last chapter!**

 **(A/N) So people have been reviewing and saying that this chapter was never posted. I don't know what happened but my computer must've glitched during the upload process or something, but that was partially a good thing because originally this chapter was super short, and the delay gave me more time to edit this.**

The chapter title is from the song "Dream" by Imagine Dragons


	14. This Just Ain't Living

_"_ _And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider's name was Death,_

 _And Hades followed him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth,_

 _To kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth."_

 _-Revelation 6:8_

-Ω-

 **Just a warning for severe blood and gore, as well as cannibalism and infanticide. I'm not light with my violence, people.**

-Ω-

The day was almost over and dusk was fast-approaching, the sky just beginning to shine with brilliant shades of yellow and orange. The colors blurred together and reflected off of the stray tufts of clouds, making the sky oddly akin to a watercolor painting or perhaps a stained glass window. The sun dipped below the foliage of the trees, its rays still trying to make a last hurrah as they speared through the gaps in the leaves in an attempt to illuminate the world like it was supposed to.

Even though the time this town had left with the sun was limited, there was still a haze in the air, a sizzling heat that was still intense despite the approaching evening, and all of the animals had scurried off into their nests and burrows as if they could somehow evade the blistering air. There had been quite the dry spell recently, and many trees stood hollow and abandoned, their branches gnarled and their roots withered. Most of them boasted a ring of dead and rotting leaves scattered around their bases like some sort of sickly halo, and as a hot, dry wind blew through, empty nests within these trees' branches rocked back and forth like empty cradles.

Despite these conditions, however, there were still kids that were out and about. School had just ended, and all of the kids were eager to take advantage of their newfound time, eager enough that they were willing to brave the heat. There were even more of them out now than there were during daylight hours, because- though the air was still hot- it was much cooler than during the morning or midday, where the temperature was practically intolerable.

There were a few that were kicking around a soccer ball or throwing a baseball back and forth, but most of them were content to chat up a storm as they sat side-by-side on the curb, their bikes lying forgotten on their front lawns. They enjoyed their time with their friends, completely oblivious to the dangers that lurked nearby, and eventually almost all of them were called in for dinner.

As the number of kids outside began to dwindle, the commotion and lighthearted chatter of the town began to fade, replaced by a soft hush. Silhouettes of people stood out against the golden light that blazed through the windows of their houses, and the leaves rustled on what little plant life had managed to survive the heat wave. Occasionally, a dog barked in the distance, but other than that, the town had fallen to the reign of a comfortable quiet.

It was almost peaceful, really, but then came the telltale sound of hoof beats.

They were like the chimes of a clock striking twelve, and they held a sort of finality to them, a message that clearly stated: _This is it._

However, instead of the steady, heartbeat-like clipping and clopping that usually signaled these horses coming into town, these hoof beats were like rolling thunder. Four sets of staccato triplets drilled at the ground, tearing it up like they were moving through water rather than dry land.

The street lights lining the road began to flicker.

Once.

Twice.

Gone.

There was a chorus of muffled cries as- one by one- the houses all fell dark, the blackness consuming the streets as bulbs blew and fuses burned out. It was like the domino effect, and people leapt from their cars as their vehicles' batteries went dead in the blink of an eye, so suddenly that they barely had any time to process it.

For a while, the peace returned, just as blissful as ever. People in their homes blamed it on a power line falling or the fuse box short circuiting, and those who were stranded in their cars thought of it to be a freaky malfunction that just so happened to affect everyone on the streets at that time. But then time passed, and with time comes panic.

When finding that there was nothing wrong with their wiring or their fuse boxes, people filtered out onto the sidewalk, rushing to their neighbors and inquiring about a fallen utility pole that didn't exist. The people in the cars tried, to no avail, to jump start their engines, and eventually gave up altogether, opting to abandon their cars and seek out answers as to why this was happening.

The townspeople's anxieties only heightened when the town hall announced that they had absolutely no clue as to what may have caused this all-encompassing power failure. The police were investigating, but they could do little without their cruisers or professional electricians.

All it took was one person saying, "Hey, there's no signal!" for people to begin to panic.

Everyone checked their phones to find their batteries either dead or dying, and the Internet was completely cut out, along with any signal whatsoever. Even the phones in the town hall failed to work, and as the fear set in, the peace was completely shattered and eclipsed by disquiet.

People began to stream onto the sidewalk and, when finding out that none of the cars were working, the streets as well. They yammered and fretted despite the police's best efforts to assure them that everything was going to be okay, but no one knew what was happening, and there was nothing more uncalmable than a bewildered and scared mob.

"I don't know what the problem is," an electrician announced to the uneasy masses. "There's nothing wrong, it just…happened."

That certainly sparked an uproar, and though their fear wasn't heightened enough for them to spring into their homes and pack their things, it definitely made them hug their children a little tighter.

Over the clamor of worried voices, the poor fools wouldn't've been able to hear their hunters coming, but the ones who could pick up the noise made it well clear that they didn't want to stick around. Dogs began to bark madly, clawing under doors and straining against leashes, and people began to cry out in fright as some of the canines leapt over their fences and began to streak down the sidewalk, while others crashed through windows in a desperate attempt to escape, their barking and howling turning into screeching that ripped through the babble of the ever-growing crowds.

"No, no!" a little girl cried as her dog's bright red leash was ripped from her hands, almost sending her sprawling. The Labrador turned back once, and only once, before it fled, following the others.

After the dogs came the cats, who escaped through open windows, which were only open in the first place because beforehand the cats had never even dreamed of leaving. Now they were terrified and in need of escape, and they tore down the street after the dogs, their fur fluffed up and their hackles raised as they fled side-by-side with one of their worst adversaries.

Fear began to permeate the air like a thick smoke, almost tangible as children bawled and people clutched their spouses.

Birds began to take to the sky in droves, the sky nearly blotted out as they called to one another. Mothers abandoned their chicks, leaving the babies behind chirping and squealing for food, and they all amassed into one big flock as they swept out of town like a giant feathery whirlwind.

"We're being bombed!" one woman cried, clutching her knees as tears streamed down her face. "It's World War III!"

"No, it's an earthquake!" another person lost in the crowd proclaimed. "Everyone get to safety!"

More and more speculations were made.

"Freak migration!"

"Dust storm!"

"Forest fire!"

The more people began to obsess over what could be happening, the more wild the claims made, until eventually some were very much expecting an alien invasion.

"It's like the Twilight Zone!" a man boomed. "It has to be aliens!"

However, out of all the claims made, there were bound to be a few that would rise above the rest.

"GOD HAS COME TO EXACT HIS VENGEANCE UPON MAN!" the minister for the local Baptist church yelled, clambering up into the bed of an abandoned black pickup truck. He raised his Bible, and what little light the sun still gave off glinted off of his spectacles. His face contorted.

"REPENT FOR YOUR SINS AND HE SHALL HAVE MERCY ON YOU, LEST YOU BE CONDEMNED TO HELL TO BURN WITH THE DEVIL!"

Out of all of the theories, this one seemed to be the most widely accepted.

"How else could the power have gone out all at once, along with the car batteries?" people murmured and wondered. "What could make our household pets so fearful other than the almighty God Himself?"

One by one, the townsfolk began to get on their knees to pray. Some clasped their hands while others retrieved crucifixes, yamakas, Torahs, Qu'rans, Bibles, prayer mats, and rosaries from their homes. One could tell how religious a person was judging by the state of the religious items that they brought from their homes that day; some of them were smooth from having fingers run over them constantly, but most had been fished out of old junk drawers and had been covered in a layer of dust before they'd finally been discovered.

People began to join up with others from their parish, synagogue, or mosque.

And there, as the sound of hoof beats- which they were still oblivious to- drew nearer, people of all different religions began to pray in unison. Hebrew and Arabic and Latin and Greek were hushed murmurs against everyone's lips and priests and reverends and rabbis and imams all came together to pray in unison.

It's beautiful, at times, how fear can bring people together.

Nonbelievers or those who simply believed that everyone was overreacting clustered off to the side, hugging their children as they conversed in quick, sharp tones.

"This will all be over soon," they were saying.

"Everything is going to be fine."

All of them sounded like they were trying to convince themselves, and judging from the looks in their eyes, that was probably the case.

Off in the distance, the hoof beats became louder, the thunder of it now audible for those who were really listening. But people prefer to hear rather than listen; they want their answers right here, right now, and if they'd just stopped and taken a moment, some of them may have been able to survive. And so they continued with their silly little prayers to their silly little saints and to their silly little deity with his silly little angels.

If one had the incredible ability to extend their hearing, they would be able to pick up the sounds that came along with the hoof beats.

The labored breathing of the horses as their sides heaved and their hooves pawed at the sky.

The clinking of knives.

The huffs of the riders as their fingers curled into their steeds' manes and their bodies hit the horses' backs with every stride, any saddles or bridles noticeably missing.

The sound of horseshoes ringing out against the asphalt.

The horses snorting and calling to one another, their eyes blazing and their mouths frothing as they surged against the wind like wolves excited for the hunt.

"AND TO MY PEOPLE, I PROCLAIM," the Baptist minister bellowed to his people, who were bowed before him like trees whose trunks were bent by the wind. "FROM ISAIAH 35:4, 'SAY TO THOSE WITH FEARFUL HEARTS-'"

The horses whinnied, their eyes crazed with bloodlust as the town seemed to rush towards them.

"'…BE STRONG, DO NOT FEAR-'"

The eyes of the rider on the white horse were eclipsed by a milky film almost the same color of his steed's hide. His veins began to turn black.

"'…YOUR GOD WILL COME-'"

The rider on the red horse began to cry. His tears were bloody and left red tracks down his cheeks. A wicked grin split his face like a crack in a sidewalk.

"'…HE WILL COME WITH VENGEANCE-'"

The blond boy's eyes turned as black as ink, glinting like two shards of obsidian.

"'…WITH DIVINE RETRIBUTION-'"

The rider of the pale horse drew a hood over his head, cloaking his face in shadow.

"'…HE WILL COME TO SAVE YOU!"

Someone screamed and pointed, and the tension that had built up exploded like a volcano.

There was a roar, and suddenly four horses were bursting forth, frothing and screeching as they surged through the terrified and frenzied crowd.

Bodies began to hit the floor faster than anyone could ever count, and people let out wails of alarm and leapt for cover as the horses plowed forward, trampling those who were too slow or weak to evade.

"Mommy!" a little boy cried as one of the horses, as white as snow and infested with disease, reared up before him. The mother lunged forward, but the rider's hand shot out lightning-fast, clamping down onto the side of her face, and the green-eyed teen laughed as the woman collapsed, screaming and writhing before going silent. Her son was not far behind.

"It's the terrorists!" someone yelled as they caught a glimpse of the black handprint, and the white horse whirled, its rider's grin absolutely wolfish.

"Worse, than that, buddy," he cackled as he rode back into the fray.

It was slaughter in its purest form, and pretty soon blood was slathering the streets like a coat of fresh paint, strewn with the dead and dying. Police fired off round upon round, but none of the bullets ever seemed to hit, not to mention the fact that they risk shooting a civilian full of lead rather than their attackers.

"Smith, we have to do something!" a sergeant barked, turning to his comrade, who had lowered her gun and had inclined her head to the ground. "Smith?"

The sergeant screamed as the officer leapt at him, her eyes leaking bloody tears and her fingers contorted like they were claws. Their friends watched in horror as Smith tore the sergeant to shreds, ripping open his chest cavity and beginning to tear up his organs all while he was still alive and screaming.

A red horse thundered by, its rider lashing out with a baseball bat covered in wickedly sharp nails and shards of glass, and he cackled as he brought the weapon down in a deadly arc. With a sickening crunch, a woman's skull imploded, and her husband screamed as she crumbled to the ground, her head crushed like a melon beneath the red steed's hooves.

A little girl sat crouched next to her younger brother's corpse, her eyes wild and the lower part of her face slathered in blood as she scooped out flesh from his abdomen and ate it raw. Her parents were next to her, their wrists boasting black handprints and their eyes empty.

There was carnage everywhere, the whole world soaked in red.

A man shrieked, clutching his husband's hand before he was ripped away and was swarmed by a group of savages, who began to tear chunks from him before he was even dead, and one could see how he kicked and writhed beneath the mob for a while before he stopped moving altogether, his dying screams drowned out by those of others.

A teenaged boy wailed as a black horse charged at him, and the poor guy never stood a chance of escape as he slipped on the blood-slick ground and fell, letting out an agonized cry as the horse brought down its front hooves and smashed his spine in half.

The horse's rider had a manic gleam in his eyes and he reached out and caught a fleeing woman by the neck. As soon as his fingers touched her, her skin sucked in around her bones like someone had vacuumed all of the stuff out of her. The literal bag of skin and bones fell limply to the ground, and the rider let out a moan, putting a hand to his stomach.

"Finally, a meal. It's been so long…" his words were lost in the frenzy.

It was a massacre, and a gruesome one at that; however, on the sidelines, a less violent entity drifted from house to house.

"Here. Sleep," the black-haired boy murmured to the infant in the bassinet, whose mother was outside and in the process of fighting her husband to the bitter death using nothing but their teeth and fingernails. The slaughter outside had thrown the baby into a fit, and it was crying incredibly hard, its face red and its expression contorted. "Don't worry, little one. Death at the hands of the others will not be as forgiving."

He placed two fingers on the child's head, and the infant stopped crying for a few moments, staring at Nico with big, round eyes, before its heart eased to a halt and it slumped, dead. Nico took a few moments to close the child's eyes and pull a blanket over its head before he drifted from the house and back to his pale horse.

"I hear another child in the next house over."

And that's how he went.

House to house, crib to crib, he offered the infants and those that were protecting them a better way out.

"But why can't you just rescue us?" a woman sobbed, clutching her two-day-old daughter to her chest. "If you can't rescue me, can you at least rescue my child?"

"There are things you just…couldn't understand," Nico replied gently, his black robes rippling whenever he moved. "But I promise you'll be met with a beautiful afterlife."

"I-I'm an atheist."

"Don't worry about it," Nico suggested. "Would you rather fall at the hands of my comrades?"

The woman took a look outside, watching as the red horse trampled a six-year-old to death. After a long quiet, she shook her head.

"Would you want to live in a world that they have ravaged?"

Again, she shook her head, and she hugged her daughter tightly against her chest, tears dribbling down her face in an unceasing flow.

"Then I think you know which path you should follow."

"What do I have to do?" she whispered hoarsely, trembling so hard that Nico feared she would shake right out of her own skin.

"Just take my hand," he explained calmly, extending his palm towards her. His long, pale fingers laced with hers, and with the other hand he grasped her daughter's meaty fist. "This'll be quicker than you think."

When it was over, he tucked the two into the bed in the master bedroom, glad to know that they were in a place that was much better than here.

By the time the whole village was dead, the sun had risen once more.

It bore down mercilessly upon the earth that it usually nurtured, bringing forth unimaginable heat.

And as the horsemen drifted from town to town, the sun did nothing to help. It did not bring back the plants that suffered Famine's wrath, but rather made sure that they stayed dead by frying them in the intensity of its rays. It did not provide comfort to those trying to escape War's influence, but rather caused them to dehydrate and die. It did not soothe those infected with Pestilence's plague, but rather made sure they died hot and in agony on the blistering asphalt. It did not provide a cure to those who encountered Death, but rather made sure their bodies festered in the heat.

The sun is often associated with life and at times, God.

This sun, however, could not care less.

-Ω-

At first, there was silence.

It was like the heart of the world had stopped beating, because there was no background noise. No humming engines or rustling leaves or chirping birds or chugging machinery.

Just silence.

Buildings stood forgotten, their windows smeared with grime and weathered with age, and cars stood like mangled husks, crowded in the middle of the street as rust began to creep up their fenders and their bumpers. Skyscrapers leaned in like they were peering at something interesting on the ground that they wanted to get a closer look at, and doors hung open, the darkness that lay beyond them making the doorways look like gaping maws.

The sky was no longer blue; without the trees to root down the soil, dust and sand had taken to the sky and blotted out the beautiful color that was normally associated with it. Now, it was a mass of different colors of brown, all of them fighting for dominance. Unlike the sky from before, which had a wide range of emotions, this sky was always angry, always roiling and stewing. The earthen clouds churned with irritation, blocking the sun and plunging the ground into a terrible freeze despite the fact that it was practically midsummer.

What trees that were still left standing were all dead, their bark greyed and worn, pockmarked like it was old leather.

Though the ruins were large, they weren't the least impressive. It was rather sad, actually- a metropolis reduced to nothing but a city long forgotten. Stores lay vacant, apartments deserted, and public parks completely abandoned.

On one street, two stately lion statues guarded the entrance to a huge library. The library had long since imploded, collapsing and trapping its vast loads of knowledge among the rubble, and one of the lions was missing its head.

A huge park lay amongst the debris, but all of its grass had long since withered, its trees nearly disintegrating. There was a zoo here, too, but all of its animals were slumped in their enclosures, bits and pieces of their skeletons beginning to peek out from wrinkled, rotting skin.

And in the water, a large green hand that was holding a huge copper torch could be seen peeking out over the surging grey waves. It would be consumed by the tide eventually, though.

Now, it would be a sin to describe all this, and yet not describe the most interesting- or rather, disturbing- part:

The bodies.

They were less rotting- the flies that usually ate them away already long gone- and more weathering. Sand and dust and ash and all sorts of things had taken to the air, and- combined with the howling wind that never seemed to rest- had sandblasted and abraded most of their skin away. Grinning skulls leered from back alleys and under cars, some parts still hidden under skin, and it seemed that wherever anyone looked, there was death.

Now, at this stage, people probably wouldn't be able to recognize what exactly caused all of this to happen.

This was probably because this was one of the earliest cities affected. In fact, it fell into disrepair about a year and a half before all of the other cities did. The bodies had a head start when it came to rotting, considering the fact that all of the crows and the wild dogs used to pick at them, but now nature was taking it into her own hands to try and wear them away.

The only things here were the buildings, the cars, the dead trees, the bodies, and the silence.

Always the silence.

It remained this way for quite some time, but one day, everything changed.

One day, the silence was driven out by the sound of hoof beats.

Clip-clop.

Clip-clop.

Clip-clop.

For about two days, this clopping continued, moving across the island and eventually across the river, where they stopped in a place that had once been known as Brooklyn.

Only a few people really knew its name anymore. Most people had forgotten.

The source of the hoof beats, a pale tan horse, was pulled to a stop. It shook its coat, and for all that anyone knew it could've been white; its coat might've just been stained from all of the dust permeating the air.

The rider's feet didn't make a sound on the concrete when he dismounted, and for a while he just brushed himself off, his nose crinkling.

The horse snorted.

"Yes, this is the place, Arion. I know it is," the rider chided, his words rolling through the empty streets like a clap of thunder.

The unlikely duo meandered through the streets, and occasionally the rider would peer into decrepit houses or wriggle through slumping fences, on a search whose mission was unbeknownst to everyone except him and his equine companion. Wherever the young man in the cloak went, Arion followed close behind, his nostrils flaring as he scented for any nearby intruders. The rider's black shawl brushed against the ground wherever he walked, kicking up some of the dust and dirt that had managed to settle, and Arion sneezed, tossing his head indignantly as his ears rotated left and right.

Large apartments bled into neat little rows of houses, the grass in the front yard completely browned and their gardens ravaged. Many of them had collapsed or fallen into a state of heavy disrepair, so that's why it was a surprise when the rider in the shawl stopped in front of one particular house.

It had used to be white, with blue shutters and a well-manicured lawn, but it was faring just about as well as every other building. Its shingles were missing, its siding mangled, and it seemed to have fallen long ago.

The young man in the shawl walked up the sidewalk and up the steps to the near non-existent porch, and the more he approached the house, the more he looked like a mourner in that black cloak of his.

Arion loitered by the sidewalk, wary, as the young man removed his hood to reveal a rat's nest of black hair that was near shoulder-length.

"Hello, Mrs. Zhang," he murmured to the wreckage of the house, running his hand over the cracked and leaning remains of a column.

There was no reply, naturally, and despite this, the black-haired boy slowly lowered himself to the ground, sitting cross-legged in front of the ruins.

"You may know me. I'm Nico. I work with your grandson."

Still no reply, and yet the boy, Nico, continued on as if he'd been given acknowledgement, "I'm here to tell you not to judge your grandson too harshly. You don't know the full story. He's probably the purest out of all of us. Well, at least he used to be."

Silence.

"World War III is going on in the East," Nico added offhandedly, almost like an afterthought as he drew loopy designs into the layer of dust on the ground in front of him. "As a woman who lost her daughter and son-in-law to war, I don't think that would please you all that much."

More silence.

"The other three like their jobs. They've been corrupted by it, actually, but I- I haven't been," he sighed, running a hand through his hair and making it even more unkempt than it already was. "I'm feeling worse and worse as time goes on. I'm not sure if it's right."

There was nothing except for Arion shifting restlessly behind him, nosing at the decrepit grasses, which had grown wildly before finally succumbing to death. The horse, unsurprisingly, didn't find anything edible to entertain himself with.

"So I've been going around the country," Nico continued, his voice growing softer. "I've hit Jason's sister's house, and now I'm at yours." He worried at his lower lip, bowing his head as if in prayer, but that was far from the case, judging by the tears that pricked at his eyes. "I've come to tell their stories. So that people understand that they're not…they're not born and bred killers. They had lives, families."

He let out a bitter chuckle, rubbing at his face. "I know I had mine, at least."

A cold wind blew past, making Nico's shawl ripple like the waves of a black sea, but the young man was unaffected by the chill.

"Frank let it slip that you used to call him 'Fai.' Because 'Frank' wasn't Chinese enough," a pause, "From what he's told me, you sound like a great woman."

Arion whinnied, and Nico shot him a glare, his eyes narrowing, and the horse reluctantly quieted, tossing his head and lashing his tail.

"I suggest you grab a seat, or whatever, because Frank told me a lot about himself, so this is going to be a long one," Nico advised, lacing his fingers together. Tears were dripping down his cheeks. He took a breath and began from the beginning:

"You could say that Frank and Death had been scandalously, scandalously intimate during the past few months, and the teenaged boy would do little to argue with you…"

 **END**

-Ω-

 **(A/N) OMG THAT'S THE END! PLEASE REVIEW YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT IT BC I LOVE YOU ALL AND WANT TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!**

 **DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN PJO AT ALL**

 **Chapter title is from the song "Cancer", which was covered by TØP**


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